


fox tail

by elizabethkween (rories)



Category: Whiskey Cavalier (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28687308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rories/pseuds/elizabethkween
Summary: An old enemy comes back to haunt Frankie and when she goes missing at the end of a case, the team does everything in their power to get her back.  Their rescue attempts are complicated by the arrival of Frankie’s former handler and the return of the most sinister mark they’ve ever encountered.
Relationships: Will Chase/Frankie Trowbridge
Comments: 16
Kudos: 21





	1. say so long baby, bye bye

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been a Labor of Love basically since May of 2019. I'd hoped to have it done a long time ago, but 2020 was a hellscape. Thank you to @thesearchforbluejello for the beta of most of this and thank you to the Discord for allowing me to complain about this for a year and half. 
> 
> This is, by far, the longest thing I've written, rounding out at about 33k and 80 pages. It's...a lot. But I hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> My plan is to post every five days or so (the first two chapters will go up relatively at the same time), all so that I can post the final chapter on the two year anniversary of our show. 
> 
> Thank you for taking this journey with me! See you in ten chapters!

Blood pulses in her head, a steady thrum that matches her footsteps as Frankie races up the stairs of the warehouse. Adrenaline rushes through her veins as she takes each step, side by side with her partner. She’ll have to yell at him later about keeping pace with her when she knows that his longer legs afford him a little more speed. 

Without saying anything, the two of them burst through the door to the fifth floor, Frankie automatically sweeping right as Will takes the left. A flash of movement at the end of the hallway catches her attention and she has time to toss out a quick “Got him!” in Will’s direction before taking off in that direction. She knows without looking that her partner is right behind her, covering her six. 

It doesn’t take long to reach the end of the hallway. They move without speaking, Will swinging his gun to the left as Frankie moves to the right where she is met by the sharp crack of a fist across her cheekbone. It stuns her for a second before she regains her senses, blocking the next attack and bringing up an elbow to catch her assailant in the neck, slamming hard into the soft flesh there. She feels her partner behind her and watches his arm come up to grab her attacker by the neck, so she uses Will’s momentum to slam the other man into the wall, a sickening crack causing him to slump forward. 

“Whiskey, there’s movement on the roof,” they both hear over the comms, Ray’s voice tinny in their ears. 

“Go,” Frankie says, already maneuvering the body in front of her to tie the man’s hands. “I got this.” 

Will nods, already moving to the end of the hallway. He takes the stairs two at a time, up the next four flights, finally spilling out onto the roof of the warehouse. The sky is clear and blue, but the air is cold, even with the sun high above. He can see ahead of him the suspect they’d been looking for, a low level arms dealer that had given them the slip before. But not today. 

“Freeze!” Will yells out and he knows he’s caught Jimenez by surprise when the other man stumbles. “There’s nowhere to go, man!” He can see from where he is that Jimenez is nervous and as Will slowly moves closer he can see the sweat on the other man’s brow. “There’s nowhere to go,” Will says again, taking steady steps forward. 

Jimenez is close to the edge of the roof, feet stuttering as he scoots closer to the lip. Will hasn’t seen a weapon, but that doesn’t mean Jimenez isn’t carrying. “Look, bud, you don’t want to do this,” he says, eyes still trained on the other man’s feet. “We just want to talk.” 

Finally, Jimenez speaks up, eyes darting around wildly in search of an escape that won’t drop him seven stories down. “Stay back!” he yells. “I’ll jump!” 

“He won’t,” Susan’s voice says in Will’s ear. “He’s scared, not stupid. Keep him talking, Whiskey, while we dig into his background.” 

The grip on his gun shifts slightly and he takes another few steps closer. He knows Susan is right, that this guy won’t jump, but his proximity to the edge makes Will nervous. He wants to get closer though, just in case the guy decides to make a stupid decision and Will has to grab for him. 

There’s a loud noise over his comm for a moment as he’s in the middle of pleading for Jimenez to move from the edge. It sounds like a scraping sound and the start of Will’s name before it’s cut off. Will doesn’t have the chance to question it, however, when Susan is coming back over the comm with an idea. 

“This guy loves his mom,” she says and he can tell she’s been running around the War Room by her breathlessness. 

“September…,” Will says back, the question trailing off. “I love my mom. It’s not exactly a character flaw.”

“Yes, I know. Jimenez loves his mom, he doesn’t want to disappoint her. You can use that.” She pauses for a moment and Will takes the quick second to think it’s strange Frankie didn’t try for a jab about his mom comment. “Convince him,” she continues, “that it’s in his best interest to turn himself in or something might happen to his mom.” 

“September, I’m not going to threaten his mother!” Will exclaims. 

“I’m not saying threaten his mom!” Susan returns, but her reply is covered by Jimenez taking a threatening step toward Will.

“What’d you say about my mom?!” he yells and Will can see the other man’s hands clenching into fists. 

Will’s grip on his gun tightens as he moves his aim and plants his feet. “Whoa whoa whoa, don’t move. Your mother is fine, but I want you to ask yourself this,” Will says. 

“Back up team is on site,” Ray says in his ear. 

“Listen, I want you to think about what your mother is going to say if you don’t come in with me. Think about what she is going to be feeling when she finds out you’ve jumped off a building.” Will watches as Jimenez stops only a foot from the edge. “Now, think about how proud she’d be to know that you turned yourself in and helped us find your boss. Because we’re not after you, Jimenez. You’re a small fish. We want the big fish.” 

Will can see the subtle changes on Jimenez’s face and decides to push it just a little bit further. “We can cut you a deal. Your mom will be so proud of you.” 

He can tell that’s what does it because Jimenez’s shoulders slump and his gaze falls to his feet. Will takes the moment to dart forward, pulling Jimenez away from the edge of the roof and spinning him around to cuff him. He can hear the roof door open behind him and looks up in time to see the back up team pouring out onto the roof. 

“Just in time,” he says to the team leader as he pulls Jimenez’s weapon from his belt. He lets the other team take over, finally holstering his weapon and checking in with the team back at the Hive. “We’re bringing Jimenez in,” he says, moving towards the door of the roof. “I think Fiery has his associate in custody on the fifth floor, I’m going to meet up right now.” 

“Copy that, Whiskey,” Ray says on the other side and Will can hear him start calling orders to the other team. 

“Fiery, I’m on my way to you,” Will says, pushing open the door and hopping down the steps. There’s no response over his comms. “Fiery, do you copy?” he says again and he tries not to let the seed of panic in his chest bloom, even as he takes the steps a little more quickly. When only silence responds to him he starts taking the steps even faster. “Fiery Tribune, do you read?” 

It takes him less than a minute to reach the fifth floor, pushing open the door with a bang. “Whiskey, do you have eyes on Fiery?” Jai asks over the comms. 

“I’m heading back to where I left her,” he mutters, already unholstering his weapon. There’s no sign of his partner or anyone else for that matter. 

“Her tracker says she hasn’t moved.” 

Will doesn’t respond, just moves down the hallway at a rapid pace. Finally, he reaches the room he’d left his partner in and he pauses outside the doorway. He uses one hand to push the door open, eyes peeled for any movement. As the door opens, he can see the still unconscious form of Jimenez’s buddy, and pushing the door open even further reveals an empty room. 

“Frankie?” he whispers, stepping into the room. Looking around, he sees no other exits except a rusted shut window. “She’s not here,” he says into his comms. 

“Shit,” Standish mutters. “I’m pulling up nearby cameras.” 

Will can hear the clacking of computer keys as he looks around the room. It’s empty save for the unconscious man and a few boxes. He pauses to press his fingers against the other man’s neck, feeling and finding a pulse, but the man still doesn’t stir. He checks the window just in case, but there’s no sign that the years of paint and rust have been disturbed. There’s no real sign of struggle, but looking closely he can see where the dust has been disturbed in some places. 

It’s only a few seconds later that he sees something glinting from the corner and he tries to calm himself as he darts over to it. “I found her earpiece,” he says, picking it up. “Explains why her tracker says she’s still in the building. Echo, do you have those cameras yet?” 

“Still working on it.” 

Will pushes his way back out of the room, pointing to someone to get the unconscious man in the room before making his way out of the building. 

“I’m on my way to the back exit,” Will says, taking quick, long steps down the hallway. He sees the leader of the secondary team and quickly asks for confirmation on where his team entered. When it’s confirmed they came in the front, Will doubles his speed to the back exit, pushing open the door with a heavy hand. 

He finds an empty back alley. “She’s not here,” he says. He could go back in and check the other rooms, but with the amount of people searching the rest of the building, he knows they would have found something so far. “I heard -” he starts before cutting himself off. 

“What?” Jai barks back. “You heard what?” 

“Before, when I was on the roof, I thought I heard something. It might have been a struggle, but it was so brief, it was nothing. What if it was-”

“Don’t,” Susan says, harsh in his ear. “This isn’t your fault.” 

Jai’s voice is sharp when he comes back over the comms. “Any sign of a vehicle?” he asks. 

Will takes some time to look around. The dirt is loose enough that there are pretty distinct tracks in it, so Will whips out his phone and snaps a picture. “I’m sending some tracks to you right now.” 

“Okay, so I have good news and bad news,” Standish says, coming on to the comms again. “Good news is, there are working cameras on site.” Will sighs in relief and looks toward the building, seeing the glint of a camera above the door he’d just come out of. 

“There’s one at the back door,” he says, a spark of hope lighting in his chest. “What’s the bad news?” 

“The bad news is, none of it is saved online. There must be a server in the building. You’ll have to grab all the hard drives and bring them back to the Hive so I can go through them. It’s going to take...time.” 

Will huffs in frustration and turns back toward the building, already moving quickly to find the server room. “Time Frankie might not have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter one title - (Stranded On) The Wrong Beach by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds


	2. i cannot go where you have gone

The last thing Frankie remembers is cuffing the guy who’d clocked her in the jaw, leaving him slumped against the wall in an empty room. Will’s voice pleading with their target is heavy in her ear and she’s debating leaving the unconscious man there while she backs up her partner. She’ll look back at that split second decision making process later and blame herself for not hearing what came next. The sound of footsteps behind her that made her stop and turn, just in time to see a fist fly towards her face. 

She tries to deflect it, but she’s caught off guard and her assailant gets the upper hand quickly, his fist slamming hard into her cheekbone. It throws off her balance, but she swings her own fist forward, catching him in the ribs enough that he grunts, but he has enough momentum to grab her arm and pull her sharply towards his body, wrapping a wiry arm around her neck and holding tight. She only has time to struggle briefly in his grasp, the start of Will’s name on her lips, before feeling a pinch in her neck and the warm, soft feeling of an anaesthetic taking effect. 

When Frankie wakes up, her ankles are tied to the feet of a chair and her arms are taught behind her back. Her head is pounding and she has a thick coating of saliva in her mouth when she swallows, fighting back the nausea. There’s a single light in the room and even that is too bright in the state she is in, so she keeps her eyes shut a moment longer. The room smells old and moldy, like years of water leaks have left it rotting in places. When she finally manages to keep her eyes open for more than a moment, she sees there are no windows and exactly one door directly in front of her. 

Her head feels fuzzy and her shoulders ache and the low buzz she usually hears from her earpiece is gone and Frankie is pissed. Several escape plans immediately start running through her head, but are cut short by the creak of the door in front of her opening. 

The light outside the room is brighter than in it, so the figure that stands in front of her is backlit by the light, ominous and imposing in the doorway. She can’t see his face, but his large build is familiar and Frankie swallows hard. His steps into the room are solid and slow and Frankie clenches her jaw as he nears her. It takes several steps, but finally, she can see his face. She has only a moment to rack her brain in recognition before a large fist is slamming into the left side of her face. 

Her cheek throbs and Frankie worries for a moment that he might have broken her cheekbone, but she doesn’t have time to think about it as his other fist buries itself in her ribs. This time she’s sure he’s broken a bone. She hunches over on her self, breathing through her teeth and trying to shake off the ringing in her ears. She holds in the whimper that’s threatening to emerge; she won’t give him the satisfaction of hearing it. 

Behind her, she can feel the presence of the man circling her, coming up on her right. She tenses for another blow, but it never comes. Instead, the man finishes his loop and crouches in front of her. Through one quickly swelling eye and the dim light of the room, she finally gets a clear look at her assailant’s face, her whole body tensing up when she realizes who it is. 

“Hello again, Agent Trowbridge.” 

*****

Finding the server room had been easy and finding the hard drives even easier. What was most frustrating was the long drive back to the Hive, the hard drives rattling in the bag next to him as he sped through city streets. 

Finally, though, Will makes it back, shoving the drives into Standish’s hands and following him back down into the lab. It doesn’t take Standish long to get several computers up and running, all of them running programs to find the exact moment Frankie was taken. Will paces behind him, trying not to rush the hacker, but the clench of his fists belie his frustration. He doesn’t even look up when Jai, Susan, and Ray all rush into the room. 

Jai settles himself to Standish’s right, eyes flicking from screen to screen as the videos fast forward through to the correct time stamp. Will can see from where he’s standing that the other man’s jaw is clenched as tight as his own. He spends a second to think about how the other man must be feeling before shaking off the impending feeling of fear the thoughts bring along. If they lose her...no. 

Ray and Susan come to him, each placing a hand on either of his arms, but he shakes them off and continues his pacing. He hears Susan’s almost plaintive utterance of his name, but he doesn’t want to look at her right now. Right now he wants the fear, frustration, and anger to fuel him and doesn’t think her placating will help, as much as he knows she means well. And he really doesn’t want to hear anything from Ray. 

The room is silent for several moments, only the hum of the electronics filling the space. Will’s nerves are stretching thinner and thinner and he’s about to snap Standish’s name when Jai’s voice calls out. 

“There!” Jai says, leaning forward, pushing Standish’s chair into his desk. Jai’s pointing at the rightmost screen, tapping the monitor with a hard finger. “Go back on this camera.” To anyone else, he sounds like a normal, working Jai, but Will can hear the undercurrent of fear in the sharpness of his tone. 

Standish types out some commands on his computer, pulling only that specific image on to a larger screen and rewinding the footage. Soon, Will can see what caused Jai to call out and his heart somehow drops in his chest and leaps into his throat at the same time. 

Frankie is there, on the screen, only a few floors below where he had been trying to talk some drug dealing scumbag off the roof. Unmoving and being carried fireman style to a vehicle (dark colored SUV, older model, half a license plate visible with EV60), Will watches his partner in pixels, his fists clenching in anger and fear. 

Will can see her clearly, long legs hanging in front of the man carrying her, her hair covering her face. He can’t see if she’s breathing or alive, but he knows she’s not fighting and he can only throw up a quick prayer that her stillness only means unconsciousness. He watches as the man (average height, thin, dark clothes, no marks that he can see, and he’s keeping his face from the camera) lift the back door and set Frankie inside. Will spares a moment to think about the gentleness with which he does it before focusing again. 

The whole team is watching, trying to gather clues and get an idea of where Frankie could be now. They’re all watching when the man, the one who’d been so diligent in hiding his face, moves around to the driver’s side door after locking Frankie away in the back, watches as he turns back towards the building, lifts his head....

And waves at the camera. 

Will’s blood runs cold as he watches the man (and he can’t even gather details, he’s so angry) make eyes at the camera, smile a wide smile, and tip an imaginary hat before getting in the car, driving the still body of his partner away. 

The room is silent once more as the dust on the screen settles. Will feels Ray lean back next to him, but he never lets his gaze wander from the screen. “Run facial recognition on that guy,” Ray says behind him and Standish’s fingers start clicking away on his keyboard. 

“He wants to be found,” Susan says next. “He went to a lot of trouble to not be seen that whole time, until right at the end, when he knew there would be a camera. He looked right at it!” 

Jai has moved away from the monitors and pulled out his phone. “We got a license plate. I’ll see if we can find him that way.” His voice carries with it a slight shake even as he taps away on his phone with a laser-like focus. 

Jai and Standish find information at roughly the same time, but it’s Standish that calls out first. “Got him,” he says, pulling the information up on his largest monitor. “Jacobson, Benjamin. 26 years old, from the UK. There’s not a lot of information on him, but I’m pulling all files on him now. It might take some-”

“Time, yeah,” Will says, turning sharply from the screen where Standish had paused with Jacobson’s smug grin front and center. “Jai, what did you find?” 

“Not much. The SUV is registered to the same name, Benjamin Jacobson, but there’s no known address. I’m putting the plate number through CCTV to see last known locations but it’s going to-”

“Don’t say it,” Will growls out. 

*****

Susan finds Will in an empty office twenty minutes later, furiously cleaning his pistol and bouncing one leg with unbound energy. He’s taken apart and put back together his gun more times than he can count at this point, but it’s better than hovering over Jai’s shoulder as he goes through relevant files. 

Susan knows that Will and Frankie have gotten close in the year they’ve been partnered up. She’s seen the way Will acts around her and knows that he cares for the other agent more than the others. She’s known him long enough now to see him fall in love several times, but she also knows that Frankie is different. Frankie isn’t like Gigi or Emma or any of the girlfriends she knows Will had after leaving the academy. Frankie had burrowed herself so far into Will’s life, had ingrained herself into the fabric of their whole team, that tearing her away now would leave them all floundering and Will would be left with a wound larger than any before. Susan’s not sure he’d be able to come back from that.

The door opening has Will bringing his head up sharply, just as he slides his magazine back into his gun for what she knows is probably the fifteenth time. His gaze is intense when he settles his eye on Susan, an almost pleading look making them shine in the fluorescent light. 

“Jai found something,” is all Susan says and Will is up, chair slamming into the wall behind him in his haste to stand. He follows her out of the office and to the room they’d claimed as their own, determination on his face as he holsters his weapon. 

“What have you got, Jai?” Will asks, the consummate professional that he is. 

“I ran Jacobson’s name through both the CIA and FBI databases for any known contacts or associates. He’s young, but he’s been around for awhile. However, there wasn’t a lot of information.” Jai takes a moment to tap a few things on his tablet and then looks up at the screen where he’s put a surveillance photo of Jacobson and a heavily redacted file on the screen. “He’s been on the CIA’s radar before, about five years ago, but then dropped off the grid after almost being captured in Portugal. Nothing since then.” 

“I reached out to some other alphabet soup organizations to see if they had anything on him,” Ray says as he enters the room. “They sent over what they had. It’s not much, but it’s a start. Jacobson is a well known figure in the foreign agencies. He’s the cleaner for a Paul Hughes, international arms dealer, drug dealer, sex trafficker, and literally every illegal thing you can think of short of parking infractions. And that’s only because he doesn’t drive himself.” 

“If this guy is so bad, why hasn’t someone brought him in?” Standish asks, looking from the photo of Jacobson to the photo of Hughes that Jai had already pulled up. On the screen is an older man, probably in his 60’s if Standish had to guess, with greying hair, even in an obviously older photo. 

Jai answers by pulling up a CIA dossier. “Apparently the CIA tried to catch Hughes five years ago, but he and Jacobson dropped from our radar,” he says. The file he pulls up looks like every dossier Will has ever seen except for the sole fact that almost every line on the page is covered by a black line. Only a few things stand out as Jai cycles through the pages, mostly the same things he already knows. 

“Hughes has been on the FBI’s most wanted list for fifteen years at this point,” Susan says, finally looking up from her tablet. “He’s wanted in twelve countries, has business ties in twenty three, and is tied to more than one cartel. He’s the worst of the worst.” 

Will has been silent through this entire exchange, eyes flicking through the few words he can actually see in the heavily redacted file. “What’s Fox Tail?” he finally says, cutting off the start of an argument between Jai and Standish. 

“What?” Susan asks, moving to stand next to her friend. 

“Fox Tail. It’s shown up a few times in the CIA, FBI, and even the Interpol files.” The group shares confused looks between them that are interrupted by a loud, British accented voice interrupting them. 

“That would be Agent Trowbridge’s old code name,” the voice says and they all spin around to face the man that’s just joined them. 

“Oh no, what are you doing here?!” Jai says with obvious irritation at the same time that Ray asks “Who are you?” 

The man in front of them raises one eyebrow in Jai’s direction before turning to Ray and the rest of the group. “My name is Noah Baker and I’m here to help you find Frankie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter two title - Strong Enough by A Silent Film


	3. i'll see you on the other side

Will looks from Susan to Jai to Standish before turning to the man that had just joined them. “I’m sorry, I’m confused?” He’s still polite to strangers, even in the midst of his worry and frustration over his missing partner. He turns back to Jai, knowing his history with Frankie. “Jai, care to explain?”

“Agent Baker,” Jai says, drawing out the other man’s name in irritation, “was Frankie’s handler five years ago.” Will watches as Jai looks Baker up and down with obvious distrust. “Which doesn’t explain what he’s doing here now.”

Noah moves closer to the team, taking in the amount of technology in the room before focusing on the team. “It’s true, I was Frankie’s handler. The Jai before Jai as it were.” Jai scoffs, muttering under his breath what Will thinks is an insult in Hindi. “And like I said, I’m here to help you find Frankie.” 

“How did you even know something had happened?” Standish says, standing from his chair. 

Noah’s focus moves from the team to the computers once more, blue eyes flickering over the screens. “Word travels fast when an agent goes down. Also, I got an alert that one of my old cases was being looked into. I just so happened to be in the building and got permission to drop in.” 

The team is quiet for a moment before Susan finally speaks up. “Hi, there, Noah was it?” she says, putting her hand out in front of her. “I’m Susan,” she continues and lets him grab her hand to shake. To her surprise, he moves forward after grabbing her hand, bends slightly, and presses his lips to the back of her hand. She can see out of the corner of her eye Jai and Standish trading a look and sees both Will and Ray bristle when Baker’s lips make contact. 

“Pleasure to meet you, Susan,” Baker says, flashing a grin at the woman. Eventually he moves away and Susan, eyebrows raised practically to her hairline, pulls her hand back. 

“Right,” she says, clearing her throat and hoping the blush on her cheeks isn’t too visible. “You said that you were alerted to us looking into a case of yours?” she continues. “Care to share?” 

“Of course,” Baker answers, voice smooth and captivating. “Frankie and I were lead on bringing in Paul Hughes in Portugal in 2014. Frankie was undercover at the time, had succeeded in getting into Hughes inner circle. But something tipped him off that Frankie was an agent because he turned on her and left her for dead. Portugal was the last contact anyone had with Hughes until your search pinged an alert.” Baker crosses his arms in front of him, his broad shoulders setting as he continues his story. “We’d been on Hughes trail for about a year before Frankie was able to find an in. She was able to get enough information to start dismantling his network, but Hughes must have figured out what was going on because he set a trap for her. A building exploded,” he says, his gaze focusing off into the distance. “She almost died.” 

Will swallows hard at that, trying not to think of a world without Frankie in it. “What happened -” he starts before having to stop and clear his throat. “What happened to Hughes?” he finally gets out. 

“He dropped off everyone's radar. CIA, FBI, MI6, Interpol. No one knew where he was or what he was doing. All we could conclude was that Frankie had been successful in bringing down his empire and he was struggling to rebuild.” 

Ray finally speaks up, stepping in front of Baker for a moment. “How can you help us find Agent Trowbridge?” he asks, casting a sidelong glance at Will. 

Noah’s grin is just this side of smug when he answers and it makes the hair on the back of Will’s neck stand up. “Besides Frankie, I know Hughes and Jacobson better than anyone. I can give you names of old associates and locations they both liked to frequent.”

The team gives each other some looks, communicating without speaking, before Will finally speaks up. “Tell us what you know.” 

*****

Frankie’s been in tight spots before, but she’s starting to think this might be making her Top Five Bad Situations. Her left eye is swollen shut and it hurts to move her jaw. Her ribs are sore enough to make it hard to breath. Her fingers have started going numb from being tied so tightly. She’s been shivering for half an hour after being drenched in water and left in the cold room. 

All in all, she’s not in a great place. After figuring out who had taken her, Frankie had doubled her efforts on finding a way out of the mess she was in. She’d inspected every inch of the room she was in, had subtly tested the strength of the chair and her bindings to it. But Jacobson was good and Hughes even better, so she’d only found a slight wobble in the chair. She can only hope that Hughes will want her moved soon and she can try to run then. Never mind that she has no idea where she is. 

Frankie grits her teeth as another shiver racks her body, breathing through her teeth at the ache in her ribs. She’s been here for hours now, though she’s not sure how many. Enough that Hughes had come and gone, a menacing figure even after five years of being underground. Jacobson had been with him every time, silent as always, but he appeared to be one of a few guards in the building. She hadn’t heard or seen anyone else since waking up. 

She’s not sure how long she spends looking around the room, but after about an hour, Hughes lumbers in again. He’s older than she remembers, but still handsome and charming, and it’s easy to see how he became one of the most dangerous members of the criminal underbelly. 

Frankie’s used to his routine now though after the fourth time, but she still clenches her jaw and glares at him. 

“Your team is better than I expected,” he says, circling around her like before. “It appears that they’ve already figured out I’m back in the game.” He comes up on her right again and she doesn’t move her head but she keeps him in her sights. “Luckily for me, I have been kept abreast of the situation,” he finishes, waving his phone jauntily. 

“You’re probably thinking, Agent Trowbridge, that maybe you have a chance to get out of here. That just maybe your team will come for you. Or maybe you’re thinking that I’ll slip up and you can get free.” He leans forward in front of her, resting his hands on the arms of the chair. “But I assure you, Francesca, you’re mine. And you’re going to feel every moment of pain that you caused me. Tenfold.” He watches her closely with his bright blue eyes and Frankie has to repress another shiver, one she knows doesn’t come from the wet and cold. 

Hughes pulls back sharply, standing and striking her sharply across her unbruised cheek. It snaps her head to the left and the sound of it echoes throughout the room, followed by the echoes of her cry. She takes her time moving her head back to face him, wincing slightly at the ache in her neck when she does, but can’t help but flinch when he grabs her face. 

“We need to clean you up, Agent,” he says, moving her head side to side. “You’ll want to look your best when we check in with your team.” Hughes finally lets go of her face and gives her another light slap on her cheek before finally stepping back and turning towards Jacobson. His voice is cold and menacing when he barks his orders at his second. “Get her ready.” 

*****

It’s not long before the door to Frankie’s room opens back up, but this time it’s Jacobson alone. He doesn’t say anything as he walks around her chair, but Frankie hears the slide of a pocket knife opening before her binds are cut. Her shoulders scream as her arms fall forward slightly and her ribs ache in protest of the movement and she can’t help the whimper she lets out as she lists forward in the chair. She doesn’t have time to dwell on the pain, however, before Jacobson is cutting the binds from her feet and hauling her up. 

Her whole body screams in agony as she lurches forward, her balance off from sitting still for so long. Still, she tries to gather her equilibrium enough to think about possible exits. She’d been able to tell from the times they’d opened the door that the hallway went left and right of where she was being held and there was a large open area just in front of the door. Her mind is a little fuzzy, but she figures if she can find the strength, she can probably take a chance on the hallway and find an open door. 

Frankie grits her teeth and readies herself, getting her feet out from under her as Jacobson pulls her forward. She knows he thinks she is weak and will come along easily, but then again, he had always underestimated her. 

The light in the hallway is brighter and Frankie has to blink back the spots in her eyes, but she goes along with Jacobson for a few more steps. As soon as he is past the threshold into the next room, however, she suddenly jerks her elbow free from his grip, lashing out quickly with a fist to his throat. She’s able to land a solid crack to his jaw and it throws off his balance enough that she’s able to pivot quickly and take off down the hallway to the right. 

The building they’re in is clearly an older style office building, with doors to conference rooms and cubicles spaced throughout. If Frankie had to guess, there is probably a set of stairs at the end of the corridor and that could be her way out. 

Plain wood door after plain wood door pass by her as she races down the hallway, one hand gripping tight to her ribs and the other pressing up against the wall. She can hear footsteps behind her, but pushes herself to keep going, breathing harshly with every step. She can see the red glow of an Exit sign in front of her and puts on a burst of speed. 

The door slams open and hits the wall behind it when she forcefully pushes it open, the noise loud in the empty stairwell. She starts down the steps, gripping the railing with one hand. Jacobson is right behind her, she knows, and probably one or two other guys, and they are gaining on her fast. She debates quickly whether to keep going all the way down or to try and shake them off by dropping in on another floor. 

She doesn’t get a chance to decide, however, because Jacobson has finally caught up with her at the top of a staircase. He tries to grab her arm again but she manages to dodge, a quick pivot out of his way that takes her out of his reach. Unfortunately, it also takes her to the edge of a step and she’s unable to regain her balance. 

The fall down the steps hurts worse than all the punches Hughes had delivered throughout the day. Her already bruised ribs crack as she hits the steps towards the middle, her ankle rolling underneath her. Her head slams into the concrete at the bottom and when she finally opens her eyes, it’s to stars and blurry vision. She can feel a trickle of blood coming from her hairline and nose. 

The two men that had been with Jacobson hurry to where she’s finally rested at the base of the stairs and waste no time in hitting and kicking her in retaliation for running. She curls into a ball, trying to protect her torso and one arm comes up to cover her face, but that leaves the rest of her body open and every strike against her makes her teeth grind. Finally, Jacobson calls out “Enough!”, the first time she’d heard his voice since being taken by him. The two men stop kicking her and instead, bend down to haul her to her feet. The pain is so intense, she almost passes out, her vision blurring as her knees buckle and slumps between the men holding her up. 

“That was clever,” Jacobson says as soon as she’s back at the top of the stairs. He tucks his fingers under her chin and lifts her head until she’s looking in his eyes. “If you do it again, I won’t stop them from killing you.” 

*****

Will is trying not to count how long Frankie’s been missing, but the ticking of the clock is a constant reminder that the longer they go without any leads, the less of a chance of finding Frankie. It sets his nerves on edge and he’s pressed half-moon bruises in the palms of his hands from clenching them so hard. 

Standish and Jai have been spending their time going over CCTV footage, trying to find where Jacobson’s car had ended up, while Susan and Ray have been going over files, Ray pulling strings to get information unredacted. Will and Noah have been going over everything Noah could remember about the case, including Frankie’s involvement with Hughes’ organization. Even with all of them working overtime, they still haven’t found where Hughes is holding Frankie and Will is on the edge of franticness. 

No one would dare bring up the fact that they don’t even know if Frankie is alive. Both Jai and Will wouldn’t even entertain the idea, putting an end to the conversation when it’s brought up. Neither of them are willing to face that fact just yet. Instead, they focus their attention on finding Frankie, watching and rewatching, reading and rereading, anything and everything they can. 

So when Will’s phone rings in the middle of the lab, it makes them all jump and turn to face him as he struggles to pull his phone out of his pocket. He glances at the screen, thinking he’ll see Casey’s name or his parents number, but instead, the smiling face of Frankie that’s been her contact image for ages is flashing up at him, requesting to video chat. “It’s Frankie,” he says breathlessly, standing quickly and tapping the screen. “Frankie!” 

The scene that greets him makes his blood run cold as he watches the screen. Frankie is there, alive and breathing, but bloody and bruised and half unconscious. Her hair hangs in strings in front of her face and her eyes are glassy while she slumps, hung up by her wrists. “Frankie!” he calls again and watches as she twitches at the sound of his voice. 

“Agent Chase,” a voice says from offscreen. “It’s so nice to meet you.” Will knows that the voice belongs to Paul Hughes even if he can’t see him. The camera wobbles for a moment as Hughes turns the camera to face himself, grinning at the screen. 

Will can see Jai and Standish moving around him and knows that Jai is working on pulling what he sees on his screen to a larger monitor while Standish starts a trace on Frankie’s phone. “What do you want?” Will grits out, glaring at Hughes. From the corner of his eye he can see Susan, Ray, and Baker move to watch the monitor. 

The camera shakes again as Hughes moves it back over to Frankie and this time Will flushes hot with anger. She’s strung up by her arms and Will can see the bruises already forming on her wrists from where she’s hanging. Her left eye is swollen shut and blood runs from a cut on her hairline down to her shirt collar, stopped only by the cloth tied into her mouth. 

“Is Agent Baker with you?” Hughes asks. “I imagine someone would have informed him by now of my return.” 

“I’m here, you arrogant bastard,” Baker says, turning towards Will with an angry look on his face. 

Hughes’ laugh is hardy and Will watches as Frankie flinches again, trying her hardest to lift her head up. “I thought you might be. Agent Trowbridge here has been quite the guest. Stronger than I remember her being, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Hughes says, walking closer to Frankie. That close, Will can see the beads of sweat on Frankie’s forehead and the tight clench of her jaw as she struggles to keep herself up. 

“What. Do. You. Want.” Will grinds out again, his voice low and angry. 

“Oh, nothing from you,” Hughes says, circling around Frankie. She’s still got her vest on, so Will can’t tell if there’s any bruising on her torso, but from the way she’s leaning, he thinks she has more than one broken rib. 

“Then what do you want with Agent Trowbridge?” Baker asks, his accented voice clearer than Will’s, even when filled with anger. 

“Not much,” Hughes responds, voice colder now, and Will can see his hand come up to push some of Frankie’s hair out of her face. She jerks back and her eyes flash open and Will can see, even in the haze of pain, her glare is full of fire and anger. “I simply wanted Agent Trowbridge here out of the way.” He continues to stroke his finger across her cheek, using a finger to tug the gag out of her mouth and Frankie’s lip curls back in disgust. “She’s been a thorn in my side before and as I’m about to make my grand re-entrance into the world, I needed her out of the way. See, I thought I’d buried her at the bottom of a building all those years ago. So imagine my surprise when one of my associates ended up being tailed by her and her new partner. I knew it was a sign that I needed to listen to.” 

Will growls low in his throat but bites back a retort. 

“You know, it was almost too easy to grab her. You really should take better care of watching your partner’s six, Agent Chase.”

“I’ll find you, you son of a bitch,” Will finally growls out. 

“Perhaps,” Hughes says with a laugh. “But it won’t be here. And it won’t be in time.” 

The screen holds steady on Frankie’s face for a moment longer and it feels like Will’s heart is going to jump out of his throat. He watches desperately as she makes eye contact with the camera, her eyes worried and afraid for a moment. She’s able to utter only a sound before the feed is cut, but it makes his blood run cold and his heart ache. 

“Will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter three title - The Other Side by Woodkid


	4. fade until i'm gone

The screen in his hand is black, but the monitor is frozen on Frankie’s broken face. His name from her bloodied lips echoes in his mind and his fist clenches tighter into a fist. 

“...Will,” he hears from behind him, Susan’s voice says plaintively. He barely hears her, however, over the hum of rage and despair and he can’t help but lash out and slam his fist into the wall nearest him, letting out a short yell. 

The pain screams up his arm but it’s successful in bringing in his focus again. “Standish!” Will barks out, making the younger man jump. “Tell me you were able to trace Frankie’s phone!”

Standish jumps before slowly standing to face Will. “I couldn’t get an exact location, BUT,” he starts, seeing the anger rise on Will’s face. “But, I was able to get a general area. I’m running the address to see if any of them have ties to Hughes, Jacobson, or any known associates.” 

“Dammit, Standish!” Will exclaims, turning on him. 

“Will!” Susan calls out. “He’s doing what he can.” 

“It’s not enough! You saw her,” he says, gesturing towards the monitor where Frankie’s bloodied face can still be seen. “You can see her!” 

“Yes, I can, and I’m just as worried as you are, but yelling at him is not going to help us find her.” Susan moves closer to Will, reaching out a hand to rest on his arm. “Will, please,” she says, and he can feel her thumb rubbing his arm. 

“No!,” Will says sharply, but doesn’t pull away. “Hughes has her and who knows what he’s going to do with her and we’re not any closer to finding her!” 

“Take a walk, Chase,” Ray barks out and Will has never heard that tone of voice from him before. 

“Excuse me?” Will says, his voice cold as he moves his gaze from Susan to Ray. 

“Take a walk,” Ray says again, softer this time, and his face is kind and imploring, trying to convey that he understands that Will is upset, but it won’t do any good to yell at anyone. 

Will wants to be angry and he lets the rage wash over him for only a moment before he sags a little and feels Susan’s hand squeeze his arm again. Looking around, he sees Standish, Jai, and Baker obviously averting their gaze. Standish’s gaze is to the floor, but Will can see the doubt on his face. Will doesn’t want to admit that Ray is right, that no matter how angry he is at Hughes and himself, there is no need to take it out on Standish or anyone else. 

Will sighs heavily, breathing harshly out of his nose before turning on his heel and leaving the room, slamming the door on the way out. 

*****

Frankie hadn’t been able to fight off one of Hughes’ men when he came at her with a syringe and if she’s being honest with herself, the warmth that overtakes her muscles as she falls into unconsciousness actually feels nice after everything she’d been through. 

She’s not sure how long she’d been unconscious this time around, but judging by the stiffness in her muscles, it was a while. She’s pretty sure they’ve moved her because it’s pitch black where she is now, but at least she’s not tied down anymore. 

In fact, her limbs are stretched out now, arms by her side, and as she comes to more and more, she realizes she’s horizontal. She wonders briefly if Hughes had put her in a bed, but that thought is quickly squashed as she tries to bring a hand up to rub at her face. Instead of moving freely towards her head, her knuckles slam into a solid piece of wood only a few inches above her.

Frankie feels her heart start beating rapidly as realization dawns and tries to control her breathing. She takes a moment to breathe in and out until her heart rate slows to a more manageable rhythm and then takes stock of her situation. She brings her hand up more slowly this time and runs her fingers along the top piece of wood. After only a moment, she comes to the edges on either side of her, the solid wood continuing down and underneath her. She stretches her toes, wincing when her ankle screams in response to being moved, but her other toe finds the end of the box. Bringing a hand above her head confirms her suspicion that the top of the box isn’t far from the crown of her head. 

Overall, the box is barely larger than she is. She has enough room to move in small increments, but she is clearly trapped. Her heart ratchets up again and she has to make a conscious effort to slow her breathing. Even in her foggy, pain-filled state, she knows that her oxygen won’t last forever and that the rapid breathing isn’t good for her probably fractured ribs. 

Through the fuzz in her brain, Frankie vaguely remembers Jacobson putting her tactical vest back on before stringing her up for Hughes’ show. She moves through the small space to run her fingers over the vest, the shaking of her hands making her fingers catch in some of the flaps. She knows they’d removed a lot of the supplies she keeps in her vest, but feeling around she notices that her small MagLite is still strapped in. Clicking the button on the bottom lights up the box, not completely, but she can at least get a sense of just how small the space is. 

Finding the flashlight sparks a fire within her and she starts frantically digging through other pockets, finding them all empty until she desperately checks the pocket where she usually keeps her phone. To her surprise, it’s still there and she digs it out with shaking hands. A trembling thumb presses the home button and the screen lights up, a generic blue and green background with the time on the screen. 

The phone wobbles in her grasp as she holds it close to her face, noting that the battery is low enough that she probably only has enough for a few calls. Pulling up her contacts, she calls the first number on the list, hitting the button for the speaker phone and holding her breath. 

*****

Ray finds Will only a few minutes after telling him to take a walk. He wants to be able to say something to his friend to help calm him, but he is aware enough to know that that probably won't be the best for either of them. So he tells Standish to keep working on narrowing down a search area and tells Jai to cross reference building owners to known associates of Hughes or Jacobson,and then Ray follows Will out of the room. He knows Susan would keep the boys on track and that Baker has his own leads to follow. He also knows that any of them will call him or track them down the second they have a location. 

So it’s an easy choice for Ray to make when he steps out of the room to find Will gripping his phone and looking like he wants to punch the wall again. Will looks up for a second and Ray can see he’s already been beating himself up over snapping at Standish and Susan since the second the words left his mouth. 

“Hey, man,” Ray starts, trying to put a grin on his face. He’s awkward, as usual, but this time it’s not because of their past but because he’s afraid of what the future holds. Ray is afraid that if they don’t find Frankie, Will might be lost too. He may be obtuse sometimes, but even Ray has seen the building relationship between the two agents. 

“Don’t, Ray,” Will says, turning his back on him. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“I was just going to say,” Ray starts, ignoring the sharp look Will sends behind him, “that I think maybe we should take your mind off of things. Let’s go down to the gym while Standish and Jai work and they’ll find us when they’ve found something. 

“Ray, I-“ 

“No, look. We are all going out of our minds with worry, but there’s not anything you or I can do until they have a lead. So let’s go punch the shit out of each other and maybe I’ll let you get in a few free shots.” 

Will watches him for a second and Ray has known him for a long time now so he knows a million thoughts are running through his mind. But finally he quirks up one side of his mouth and nods, turning fully towards Ray. 

“Come on,” he says when Will makes eye contact. 

An hour later, Will’s face is bright red and sweating from exertion and Ray’s hand is numb. 

Will is breathing hard as he slams his fist into the padded glove on Ray’s hand. They’ve been in the gym for hours now and Will really has to hand it to Ray because he’s been on the receiving end of Will’s punches for that long. 

Finally, Will’s body decides it’s had enough and he bends at the waist, resting his hands on his knees. Ray takes a moment to peel off the padded gloves, flexing his fingers and inspecting his red palms. 

“Sorry,” Will says when he notices, standing straight again. 

“No, it’s fine. That was the point, right?” 

“Ray-“

“Look, I know my word doesn’t mean much to you anymore. But I promise you. We are going to get her back.”

Will swallows hard around the lump in his throat and nods once before clenching his jaw in determination. His voice is choked with emotion and fear when he finally responds with a soft “Yeah.”

*****

Jai has been crawling through names for what feels like hours but is probably closer to only one, seeing if any of them pop up more than once in reference to Hughes, Jacobson, or any of the buildings Standish had been able to narrow down in his search. From that list, he’s been doing thorough background checks, trying to see if anything matches what they already know from the now unredacted dossiers and Baker’s own memory. 

As annoyed as Jai had been when Baker had shown up, he has to admit that the other agent is pulling his weight in the investigation. He’d never particularly liked the agent, though they’d only met a handful of times after Frankie had joined Jai’s team, in a purely business situation that involved Baker handing over all of Frankie’s files before dropping off the face of the earth. He’d never asked Frankie what their history was, preferred to think that they were just Handler and Agent, but logically he knows that at one point they were more. Frankie had hinted at such things once when she was drunk in Shanghai, but Jai had cut off the conversation early before tucking her into bed. 

Between Standish tapping away furiously on his computer, narrowing down the signal on the brief video call, Susan and Baker hunched over every blue and manila folder with even the most tenuous link to Hughes that they could find, and Jai himself watching and rewatching the feed to find something they missed, it still takes them hours to sift through everything. 

Jai cracks his neck as he stretches, rolling his shoulders back and is preparing to put headphones back on for yet another watch of the call when he notices Standish has stopped typing. “Standish?” he says quickly, staring at his friend. 

“I think,” Standish starts, his voice cracking from disuse. “I think I found her. I mean, I think I found the building. I mean, the signal.” 

Jai stares at him a moment longer before jerking off the headphones and throwing them at his station as he stands. “Where is she?” he asks, moving towards Standish’s computer. He sees Baker and Susan move out of the corner of his eye and makes room for them. 

“I wasn’t getting anywhere with traditional signal tracking, I could only get within a five mile range. So I started hacking into the phone company and was able to narrow it to one mile. And then I remembered this proprietary software from the Peruvian government that takes all known satellites and cell towers and allows for near perfect accuracy in narrowing down a target.” Standish doesn’t take his eyes off the screen the whole time he speaks and when Jai looks at the monitor, a dot is blinking over a specific office building. 

“Good job, Standish,” Susan says, placing her hand on his back, making him jump. “Great job.” 

Jai stares at the dot on the screen, watching it blink a few more times before he turns on his heel and rushes out of the room. It’s not until he’s in the hall that he breaks into a run, heading directly towards the gym. 

When he finds it empty, he moves directly to the locker rooms, slamming the door open with a crash to find Will and Ray tying their shoes. “He found her,” Jai says breathlessly and barely has enough time to get out of the way before Will is bolting past him back up to the office. 

Ray leaves the locker room slower, grabbing the door so Jai can walk with him, but both of them pick up the pace as they head into the hallway. 

Ray sighs as they finally make their way back into the office, holding the door once more for Jai. “Hey,” he says, stopping the other man with a hand on his arm. “If you’re wrong…” he starts before trailing off and turning his gaze to Will. 

Jai follows his gaze and swallows hard. “I know.” 

*****

Frankie will not cry. She won’t. But when the call fails again and her phone drops another percentage point on her battery, she can’t help but let out a choked sob. She clicks the screen off and tries to take a deep breath, but her ribs ache so much she can’t breathe as deeply as she wants. 

She debates for a moment about turning off the flashlight as well, but ultimately decides to leave it on, if only to give herself a momentary comfort. Above her, the wood of the box is broken up into slats and she wonders for a second if she can pry a board loose. 

Frankie fits her fingers as far between the cracks as she can, her fingernails catching and stinging on the wood. She doesn’t have much leverage, but she uses much of her remaining strength to start pulling at the wood, hoping to loosen one of the nails she sees. 

For a second, she thinks it’s working because she can feel a slight give, and in the next second her mouth is being filled with dirt and she’s having to turn to the side to brush her face off. She’d wondered earlier if she was buried or just in a box and the taste of earth has confirmed her fear. 

But she will not cry. 

She spits one last time and takes another short breath before pulling her phone back up to her face. Frankie doesn’t know if it was the short break or the slight movement in the earth above or maybe just someone looking down on her, but this time when she hits the home button on the phone, she notices one lone signal bar. 

Then she cries. 

*****

There had been a quick argument as to who was going to be on the tactical team and who was going to stay at The Hive, but eventually Will just walks out of the room, Ray and Baker close behind. Susan convinces both Standish and Jai that they’re better off there, keeping an eye on the others and advising over comms. 

She can tell Jai isn’t happy, so she makes sure to stand near him, readying a steady hand should he need it. It takes over an hour for Will, Ray, and Noah to make it to the industrial complex with the abandoned office building where the signal had pinged, but to Susan, Jai, and Standish, the wait had felt like forever. 

But finally, the other team makes it, and when Standish lets them know there is no movement around the building, they move quickly into it, guns drawn and eyes peeled. The three of them sweep each floor and Will grows more and more desperate by the minute, the longer they go without finding Frankie. 

By the third floor, they’ve found nothing but empty rooms, but Baker points out what looks like blood at the bottom of the stairwell and Will takes the steps to the next floor two at a time. The blood trail continues up so he skips the door and moves up to the fifth, thighs bunching as he jumps the last few steps. 

There’s more blood on the door frame and when he opens the door, swinging his gun left and right, he can see handprints on the wall near him. Will nods to himself when he realizes that it was probably Frankie trying to make a break for it and he can’t help but be proud of his brave and wonderful partner. 

His partner that he hopes is still here. Will moves further down the hallway, a little less careful now, but he hasn’t seen or heard anyone in five floors and he doubts anyone is here. He pushes open a door to his left and sees a dark closet with a lone chair in the middle, zip ties abandoned on the floor. Across from the room is another door, this one wide open and familiar. 

He recognizes it as the room where Hughes was during the video call, where he’d seen Frankie so broken and had felt such a rage like nothing before. He sees the table and chairs he’d seen in the video, the dirty windows, and the pipes they had strung Frankie up on. 

But Frankie isn’t there. 

When Baker and Ray finally join him in the room, they find him with his hands at his sides, his gaze focused on the empty spot where his partner had once been. He’s silent and his gaze is blank and Ray takes a second to move up next to him. 

“September, that’s a negative on Fiery,” Ray says softly but Will still flinches and Ray can hear Susan sigh over comms. “I’m bringing Whiskey back in.” 

“No,” Will says quietly, still not looking anywhere but the wall. 

“What?”

“No, Ray,” Will says again, finally moving his gaze over to the man. “I’m not going anywhere until I find Frankie.”

“Will-“ Ray starts and from behind them Baker chimes in with an “Agent Chase” But Will cuts them both off again. 

“No,” he says, this time more forcefully. “Not without Frankie.” 

*****

Standish and Jai get to work pulling up CCTV footage from the surrounding areas while Will’s team heads out to see if anyone in the town had seen anything. Susan tries not to think about how long Frankie’s been gone now, but Standish has just about worn a hole in his lip from biting it, Jai keeps muttering to himself, and Will....

She worries about Will the most. 

Susan knows that Will and Frankie have always had this will they, won’t they relationship. She’s commented on it herself more than once. But she also knows that they are professionals and have never let anything happen between them. 

She’s fairly confident they both would have confided in her if they had. 

And she also knows that their feelings for each other run deep. She sees it in the gifts they give each other at Christmas and on birthdays, in the way that Will supports Frankie’s decisions even when he doesn’t always agree with them, in the way Frankie knows how to bring Will back alive every time. There is something deeper than mutual admiration there and Susan is worried every second that Frankie is gone that Will isn’t going to be able to come back the same. 

Susan is thinking of the best way to bring Will back from the edge while Jai and Standish work and she listens with one ear as the tactical team keeps them updated on their position. 

She’s so deep in thought that she doesn’t even hear Jai’s phone ring across the room, just sees the man shift to pull it out of his pocket. 

Her focus is pulled entirely to him, however, when he quickly stands, his chair rolling slowly away as he answers the phone frantically. 

“Frankie!?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter four title - The Raven by Sam Tinnesz


	5. way down deep where the shadows are heavy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh we're halfway there
> 
> everything happens so much

Ray sneaks another sidelong glance at Will. He’s probably looked to his left about forty times since leaving the room where Frankie had been held. They’re waiting to turn over the building to a forensics team, but Will’s face hasn’t changed since they found the space empty. 

Will’s jaw is working overtime it seems and any other day Ray might have made a joke about having to make a trip to the dentist, but today all he can feel is worried. Worried for his friend and for Frankie. Though the team hasn’t been together for long in the grand scheme of things, and even though things are still not 100% better between him and Will, he considers the whole team family. 

Logically he knows that Frankie can take care of herself. She’s proved it on more than one occasion with targets and marks and even Ray himself. And judging by the scene she’d left behind in the office building, she’d been able to hold her own against Hughes and Jacobson. 

Still, he’d seen the state of her in the video and he can’t help the worry that tugs at him. He watches for a moment as Will checks his phone for the tenth time in under a minute and bites his lip. “Will,” he starts, but he’s cut off. 

“Delta, any news?” Will says in response, ignoring Ray completely. Jai’s voice comes back with a negative, tinny in all their ears and Will sighs heavily. 

“Agent Chase,” Baker chimes in, his accented voice smooth and clear, covering any fear or frustration he may be feeling over the missing agent. “Perhaps we should head back to base and put together the evidence we have.” 

Will casts a side long look at Noah and Ray hears a soft “oh no” from Susan over the comms. “I’m just making a suggestion, Agent Chase,” Baker continues, holding up his hands as if to surrender. “I understand your desire to get Frankie back, believe me,” he says, ignoring Will’s glare at the statement. “I want her back just as badly.” This time he can’t ignore the look Will shoots his way. 

Ray is about to lead Noah away from the increasingly angry looking Will when Jai’s voice comes over the comms next. Ray watches Will as the situation sinks in and moves from Baker to his friend, arm outstretched as Jai calls Frankie’s name again. 

*****

Frankie’s voice shakes when Jai answers the phone, a choked out plea that is his name. She wants to laugh and cry at the same time so she does both. “Jai!” she says and then says it again. 

“Frankie! Frankie, where are you?” Jai asks and she can hear him click her over to speakerphone as well as clicking some keys on the keyboard to patch her in on the comms. 

“I don’t-I don’t know,” she says and she can tell her adrenaline is spiking because her hands are shaking fiercely. “I was in an office building.”

“Yeah, Franks, Will’s there right now,” Susan chimes in. 

Frankie shudders out a breath, her ribs aching and her body shivering. “Will?” she says on a sigh of relief.

“I’m here Frankie!” Will says and to Frankie his voice sounds further away, a side effect of being connected through the comms. 

Her voice sounds small and tired when she repeats his name, but they all hear as she takes a deep shaky breath before continuing. “My phone doesn’t have much battery,” Frankie says, taking a quick look at the screen. The numbers have already dropped another two percent and she tries not to think about what that means. 

“Tell us where you are, Frankie,” Jai repeats and Frankie tries to remember if she’s ever heard that tone of voice from him before. “Are you still in the office building?”

Frankie sighs heavily, fighting off exhaustion. “I’m...I think I’m underground.”

“Good, that’s good, Franks,” Will’s voice chimes in, soothing and encouraging. “Tell us what you see. Are there any windows or doors? Can you hear anything?” 

Frankie breathes as deep as she can again before swallowing hard and answering. “No, I think I’m...buried...underground.” Saying it out loud seems to make it feel more real and fear creeps into the back of her mind, making her breathing speed up. 

Between breaths she can hear Susan gasp followed by swearing from Standish. Will and Jai are silent in her ears. 

“Okay. Okay, that’s okay,” Will says. “We’re going to find you,” he says with conviction and his voice pushes the fear back to the corners of her mind. Will’s not the type to lie to her, no matter how bad the situation is. And this one is pretty bad. 

“I’m going to ping your phone, Franks, don’t worry,” Standish says and she knows he’s already running some kind of program to find her. “We’ll have you home in no time.” 

Frankie smiles at his tone, ever optimistic. “Paul Hughes…” Frankie starts, but she’s not sure she knows where she’s going with the statement by the times she’s done. 

“We’re on it, Frankie,” Baker chimes in finally and his voice above all makes her focus immediately. 

“Noah?” she whispers, lifting the phone to look at the screen again. “What…?”

“I heard you’d gotten yourself in a spot of trouble.” 

“Something like that,” she says tiredly. Something in the back of her mind flickers briefly, a question with an answer just a little too out of reach for the moment. 

“Frankie,” Jai interrupts. “Can you tell us anything about where you are?” 

“No, I-I tried to move one of the boards, but it was all dirt.” She wonders briefly if she should describe the taste of the soil, if maybe that would help, before Jai is speaking again.

“Okay, is it warm or cold?” 

“Cold.” She shifts slightly in the space, trying to relieve some pressure from her shoulder blades pressing into the bottom of the box. She regrets the move immediately for two reasons. 

One, her bones creak in protest of the movement, her ribs feeling like they’re grinding together and pain flares across her shoulder blades. Two, she hears a three tone beep from the phone and then the space is filled with silence. 

She scrambles to pull her contacts back up, fingers shaking in her haste. Jai’s number flashes up on the screen and for a moment Frankie thinks it’s going to connect, but in the next second the phone beeps again and fades back to the contact list, call failed. 

She tries again, desperately, and can’t help the cry of frustration when nothing connects. She can see the lack of bars in the corner of the screen and tries to move the phone around the space, hoping against hope that at least one bar will fill in. But there is nothing. 

The small bead of hope that Will had instilled in her with his promise to find her slowly fades as she lets her phone screen grow dark. Frankie takes as deep a breath as her ribs allow and wants to believe that they’ll be able to find her. But she can do the math and knows that she is quickly running out of time. 

“Please,” she says into the darkness. “Please.” 

She closes her eyes and feels the exhaustion fully take her. Her last thought before unconsciousness is of Will. 

*****

“Cold, okay. Does it smell like anything?” Jai is already cross referencing weather patterns with the general location Standish has pulled up from the phone trace. There’s nothing concrete yet, but he knows the hacker is working hard on narrowing down the location. 

When only silence answers him, Jai leans back from the computer quickly. “Frankie?!” 

“What happened? Where is she?!” Will asks. 

Jai looks at the phone and sighs, frustration filling his tone as he answers. “Call failed,” he says before turning to Standish. “Were you able to trace her phone?” 

Standish fidgets in his seat but doesn’t look up from the computer. “The signal was weak, so I wasn’t able to narrow it down. But it looks like she’s somewhere about eighty miles northeast of the industrial complex.” Jai watches as Standish pulls up a map, a yellow circle popping up around the area where the hacker thinks Frankie might be, an unpopulated area that looks to be full of trees and nothing else. 

“Send me the coordinates,” Will says over the comms and the rest of the team can hear him moving already. 

“It’s not exact, man,” Standish says, shaking his head. “It’s a big area.” 

“Can you narrow it down?” Susan asks encouragingly. 

Standish sighs before finally turning to the rest of his team. “There aren’t enough cell towers in the area to triangulate an exact location. I can get a general area, but it’ll be about a three mile area. If Frankie is,” and he takes a moment to collect himself before continuing, “buried underground, we could be looking for a while.” 

“What about that software you used before?” Ray asks. 

“It only works if there are enough cell towers around,” he says. “I think...this is as close as I can get.” 

The rest of the team can hear how disappointed and defeated he sounds. “It’s a good start,” Susan says before coming up behind him and resting her hand on his shoulder. “You did great.” 

Standish slumps back down in his seat and exhales heavily, eyes downcast and shoulders hunched forward. He glances back up at his screen for a second, watching the yellow circle blink. “Yeah...great.” 

*****

Will lets out a shaky breath and bounces his knee as he watches the North England landscape flash by from the passenger seat. He knows his bouncing is probably driving Ray crazy, but he doesn’t stop. His nerves are fraying and all he can think about is how Frankie sounded on the phone, his name in her voice echoing in his head over and over again. 

His phone had pinged fifteen minutes ago with a search location about eighty miles away and he knows that it should take about an hour and a half to get there, but it’s somehow the shortest and longest fifteen minutes of his life. The silence in the SUV eats away at him and he can’t tell if he wants Ray to say some stupid comment to take his mind off of things or if he’s grateful for the silence. 

Jai’s been calling Frankie’s phone back non-stop and Will can hear the click over the comms over and over again. It makes his heart rachet up every time the line rings only to drop when it goes straight to voicemail. Standish hasn’t said a word since finding the location, but Will imagines him hunched over his computer, typing some unending code that will hopefully narrow down their search. Susan has been offering words of comfort and reassurance to the group as a whole and it makes him feel a little bit better. Susan always knows how to balance reassurance with realism and it’s something Will has always appreciated about her. 

But Will’s been counting. He’s been counting since Frankie was taken, counting the hours since the video, counting the minutes since Frankie’s call, and he knows. He knows that she’s running out of time. 

He’s done the math and it makes him want to vomit. Frankie’s of average size and if the box is of average size then, best case scenario, she has about five and half hours of air. If Hughes had buried her not long after the video call, then she’s probably down to two and half hours, probably less. The only silver lining is that, if Frankie had spent any of that time unconscious, she’d probably extended her time a bit. 

Still, Will can’t help but think about the possibility of not finding her in time. Of searching the whole area of woods where Standish thinks she is and never finding her. Of losing her forever. 

His leg bounces faster and he casts another look at his phone, hoping it will tell him something new. He lets out a frustrated sigh when the screen shows only Frankie and him smiling at the screen, the time another reminder of what he doesn’t have left. 

*****

Frankie’s been asleep for hours or minutes, but eventually she startles awake, confused for a moment until remembering where she is. Whereas before she woke up terrified, now she wakes up angry. She mentally swears to hunt down Hughes and Jacobson and put a bullet in each of their skulls. 

If she gets out of this. 

Her phone is still resting on her stomach where she’d dropped it before and turning it on reveals that she is somewhere in the low teens of battery life left. There are no bars so there is no service and Frankie braces herself for the pain she knows she’s about to inflict on herself. But, she knows it’s necessary so she holds her breath and shifts to her right, her ribs flaring in pain that seems to travel to the base of her skull. 

She takes a moment to collect herself, breathing through her nose to stave off the nausea, before chancing a look at her phone again. She laughs with joy at the tiniest of bars on the side of her screen and chokes back tears. Her fingers are clicking over to her contacts before she can even realize and she holds her breath again waiting for the call to connect. 

The call rings through only once before Jai’s voice is filling the space around her. His voice is relieved and strangled as he calls her name through the line and she can’t help but echo it. 

“Jai,” she whispers.

“I’m here, Frankie,” he replies. “We’re all here.” 

“Frankie!” she hears from Will’s line and she can’t help but smile at his voice. “I’m coming to get you, Frankie,” he says before she hears him direct Ray to drive faster. 

“How are you doing, sweetheart?” Susan chimes in, her voice reassuring. 

“Been better,” Frankie mumbles and she resists the urge to shift. She doesn’t want to risk losing the tenuous connection she seems to have. “My head hurts. Probably a concussion.” She remembers the heavy fall she took down the stairs and how hard her head had slammed into the concrete. “And my, my ribs are broken.” Frankie shudders out a painful breath and shivers in the dark. 

“Okay, Frankie, That doesn’t sound too bad. Just take slow breaths okay and whatever you do, don’t fall asleep.” 

“Yeah,” Frankie replies and it’s like just the thought of sleep makes her want to give in to her exhaustion and she finds herself struggling to keep her eyes open. 

She can hear Jai muttering something to Standish and she pops her eyes open with a slight gasp. “Where am I?” 

She can hear the deafening silence on the other end of the phone and her heartbeat rachets up again. “Guys?” 

“Frankie, do you not remember-” someone starts but she cuts them off. 

“No, no I know where I am.” she says quickly. “I just...where - where was I taken?” She can hear the sighs of relief from her team and let’s her lips twitch up in a smile. 

Jai answers her question, his voice clear and almost calming to her now. “We were able to track your phone to a location, Franks, and Will is on his way there now.” 

“We’re about an hour away, Frankie, you gotta hold on.” Will finally chimes in. She wonders for a moment what he’s thinking and how he’s feeling. She remembers the guilt and anger he felt over Emma, a situation that was out of his control, and hopes that he’s not anywhere near that with her. 

“I’m fine, Will,” she replies, but she’s utterly unconvincing and she can hear Will huff out a laugh. 

“Yeah, I know you are.” She can hear the small smile in his voice and it brings one to her own face. 

Frankie casts a look at her phone screen and winces at the battery. It seems to be dropping faster and faster with every minute, now just below two digits. “My phone,” she says.

“What’s wrong with your phone, Frankie?” Jai asks. 

“I don’t - There’s not a lot of battery left. I don’t think it will last an hour.” 

The other line is silent for a moment before Jai comes back, his voice attempting to be reassuring. “That’s okay. We’ll figure something out.”

“I think I’ll have to hang up,” Frankie says with her heart in her throat. “I’ll call back. I can call back in fifteen minutes.” 

Will’s voice immediately comes over the line, pleading with her. “No, Frankie, you need to stay with us.” 

And Frankie wants to. Frankie wants so badly to have that constant connection with her team. Her team that she knows is doing everything they can and more to find her, but she can do the math here and she knows. She knows that she’s running out of time. And if she’s running out of time, she wants to spend as much of it talking with them, even if it has to happen in fifteen minute intervals. 

“Will,” she starts and she knows he can hear her plaintiveness. “I’ll call back.” He starts to talk over her, telling her ‘No’ and Jai and even Susan start to chime in. “I’ll call back,” she says again, but there’s a fear in her voice now that they’re pleading with her to stay. 

“No, Frankie, stay with us,” Will tries again and Frankie chokes back a sob. 

“I’ll call back, I promise,” she mutters and then hits the end button before she can think, the screen fading back to her contact page and she shifts her phone to the left and watches the bar drop away. 

She wonders for a second how long they’ll try to call her back before she lets the tears fall, staring at nothing at the dark wood above her. 

*****

Will hears the call end with three beeps and immediately wants to hit something. He settles for slamming his hand down on the dashboard of the SUV, his already bruised knuckles flaring with a grounding pain. Over the comms he can hear Susan and Jai arguing about calling Frankie back, but he knows that Jai will be calling whether Susan thinks they should wait for Frankie or not. 

He slams his hand a few more times onto the dashboard and then turns to Ray. “Drive faster.”

“Will,” Ray starts, taking his eyes off the road briefly to cast a glance at him. 

“Drive. Faster.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter five title - Remains by Bastille
> 
> ooh livin' on a prayer


	6. promise you'll smile off a memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably my favorite chapter.

Frankie keeps her promise and calls back exactly fifteen minutes later. The relief she can hear in all their voices gives her strength, even as she feels like giving in to the exhaustion that is slowly taking over. Her head pounds with every beat of her heart and she hasn’t been able to take a full breath in probably hours and any breath she does get to take makes her feel woozy. She’s been in enough situations to know that she has a concussion, and probably a pretty severe one at that, along with at least two broken ribs which may or may not have punctured a lung, and she’s pretty sure her ankle is sprained. That’s not to mention the myriad of bruises on her face and torso from Hughes’ prolonged torture. 

“Do not do that again, Francesca!” Jai exclaims as soon as he gets past the relief of hearing from her again. If she didn’t know him better, she’d think he was actually mad, but she knows he’s just worried. She hates that she’s made them all worried. She thinks about what would have happened if she’d just been more vigilant back at the warehouse, if she’d been more vigilant about her surroundings, maybe she wouldn’t be here now. It must be the rapid increase and decrease of adrenaline in her bloodstream that messes with her emotions because she starts to cry quietly and hopes they can’t hear her. 

But they must because Susan gets her attention. “Frankie, sweetie, how are you doing?” 

Frankie lets out a wet laugh and blinks back tears. “I’m tired,” she says, her voice hoarse. 

“That’s the concussion, Franks, so you can’t fall asleep.” 

“I know.” She struggles to let out a heavy sigh that makes her ribs ache. 

It’s silent for a moment as they listen to her breathe before finally Will speaks up. “Frankie, were you awake when they moved you? Is there any information you have that would help us find you?” 

“No, they gave me something. I tried to fight but-” 

“I know you did, Frankie, it’s okay. We know you fought as hard as you could. And you have to keep fighting, okay?” His voice is filled with desperation that makes her choke up again and she swallows hard. “We’re almost to you, I promise. We’re almost there.”

“Yeah,” she whispers, fighting the exhaustion that takes over her body. When her phone beeps loudly in her ear, she jerks slightly, breathing through her teeth to push back the pain. 

“What is it, Frankie?” Susan asks. 

“My phone,” she chokes out, pushing back tears again. “The battery is -” She swallows hard as she glances at the phone screen. “I should hang up again.” 

“No, Frankie, don’t -” is all she hears, but she honestly doesn’t know who says what when they all talk over each other. 

“I’ll call back,” she promises, just like before, and she hits the end button before she can second guess herself. 

*****

When Frankie hangs up again, Jai looks at the phone in his hand, sets it quietly on the desk in front of him and walks out of the room. Standish stands to follow, worried about his friend, but Susan stops him. 

“I’ll talk to him,” she says. “You find Frankie.” 

She finds Jai not far down the hallway, facing away from her with lines of tension across his shoulders. She leans on the wall behind him, knowing he knows she’s there, and waits for him to speak. 

It takes longer than she thought but finally he breaks the silence. “I met Frankie after she was cleared for field duty after the Portugal mission. I didn’t know much about what happened at first, just that she had requested a handler transfer and I was the lucky guy. I didn’t want to be a handler, I wanted to be in the lab where I could just make things for the agency. And then I met Francesca and she was just like me, just wanted to do her job, but didn’t want any attachments. So we made a pact to do our jobs and have each other’s backs, I would make the gear and she would go into the field and that was that.” Jai takes a deep breath and turns to face Susan, his eyes watery and face angry. “Somewhere along the way she became my best friend.” 

Susan swallows hard but doesn’t move toward Jai; she knows that he wouldn’t appreciate physical comfort. “Frankie is a strong woman and an extremely capable agent. She’s not going to give up and we aren’t going to give up on her. We’re going to get her back.” 

Jai breathes out shakily and nods before mumbling out a quick “Excuse me” and moves down the hall to the men’s room. 

Susan sighs but lets him go. 

*****

Will sees green and green and more green as Ray drives them further into the wooded area and if it were any other day, he might appreciate it a little more. But right now, all he can think about is getting to Frankie in time, about how much of the area they’ll have to cover to find her in all this green. He shifts in his seat for the hundredth time and glances at the speedometer. 

“Will-“ Ray starts, but Will cuts him off. 

“I know, I’m sorry.” He casts a glance into the backseat where Agent Baker is typing something out in his phone. Will waits a moment for the other man to finish and catch his eye, raising his eyebrows in question when Baker does. 

“Keeping my superior up to date,” Baker says, waving the phone around slightly. 

Will doesn’t say anything, just nods in understanding before turning to face the front again. 

They’ve been driving for forty minutes and Ray’s shaved off a good chunk of time, but they’re still so far away and it sets Will on edge. 

“Why Frankie and not you?” Will asks into the air. Beside him, Ray seems to choke on nothing. 

“Pardon?” Baker says from behind him. 

“You and Frankie both worked the Hughes case. Why take Frankie and not you?” Will asks a little more than accusatory. 

Baker is silent for several moments before finally answering. “I guess because I no longer do field work. It’d be much harder to take me from an FBI info hub than an agent in the field. Hughes has always been a smart man and was often a step ahead of us. I imagine that five years underground has given him a slight advantage in the game.” 

Will casts a glance in the back again to see the look of slight admiration on Baker’s face. 

“Yeah but he underestimated Frankie before,” Will replies. 

“That is true. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and he’ll have underestimated her again.” 

Will doesn’t say anything else, only leans back in his seat again, chances another look at the speedometer, and sighs. 

*****

Frankie jerks awake from a light doze and winces at the ache in her bones. Between the concussion and the decreasing oxygen supply, she knows she won’t be able to stay awake much longer. 

She scrambles for her phone and checks the time. It’s been almost fifteen minutes since she hung up and thankfully her battery hasn’t gone down any since then but she knows it’s a race against the clock. She thinks it’s okay to call just a little bit early and hits the screen over Jai’s name. 

It rings more this time and she thinks maybe he’s not going to answer before finally his voice comes over the line. She lets out a shuddery breath of relief. 

“Frankie?!”

“I’m here,” she says, voice soft and tired. 

“How are you?” Susan asks, matching Frankie’s quiet tone. 

Frankie sighs before answering, trying to gather her thoughts and express them in a way that won’t worry her team further. She thinks of the knot she knows is on the back of her head and the headache it’s brought that throbs with every beat of her heart. She thinks of sharpness in her ribs and her inability to breathe properly. She thinks of her swollen and aching ankle and the shooting pains in her shoulder blades and the dizziness that comes not from a concussion but the lack of oxygen. 

“I’m here,” is all she says again. 

The line is quiet and if it weren’t for Will’s breathing through the comms, she’d worry that she’d lost them again. 

“We are so close, Frankie,” Will says into the silence. “Just hold on a little longer.” 

It takes her a little time to answer but finally she breathes out a quiet “Yeah” and then silence fills the comms again. She wonders if they find as much comfort in just being on the line that she has found. 

“Jai,” Frankie whispers into silence after a long moment. Her throat is dry and his name cracks as it leaves her lips. 

“I’m here, Frankie.” 

“Take me off comms.” 

The silence that answers her drags for another long moment before Jai finally answers with a harsh “No.” 

“Jai, please.” 

This time everyone else chimes in as well. 

“Girl, what?” Standish says and Frankie can see him so clearly, leaning back in his chair with a distraught look on his face. Ray and Susan just exclaim her name, but it’s Will’s voice, full of fear and some other emotion she’s not able to recognize, that creates a lump in her throat that makes it hard to swallow. 

“Don’t do this,” Will says and she almost can’t hear him over the others. “Just hold on.” 

“Please, Jai,” Frankie continues pleading. She hears a very heavy sigh over the comms and then Will’s voice cuts off as Jai clicks them over so only they can only hear each other. 

“Don’t you dare do what I think you’re about to do, Francesca,” Jai barks out, but she can hear the way his voice cracks in anger or fear or frustration. 

Frankie swallows hard around the lump in her throat and tries not to choke on a sob. “Jai, you know you’re my best friend, right?” 

“Frankie-”

“Please, let me finish. I was alone for so long, but you - You’re my best friend, Jai. I’m so sorry. You should know, this isn’t your fault. I never would have made it this far without you. I wouldn’t be alive without you. Whatever happens, Jai, I want you to know that I love you. You’re the smartest man I know. Keep them alive.” 

She knows that her speech was rambling and unconnected, but she hopes that her intentions were clear. She’s not trying to say goodbye, but she can count her odds. 

“Frankie -” Jai starts again, but again she cuts him off. 

“Connect me to Standish?” 

Jai is silent for a long moment, long enough that Frankie wonders if she’s lost the connection. But then he clears his throat and she hears him click her over to Standish’s comm. 

“Hey, girl, we are so close to finding you, so don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. I know I shouldn’t reduce you to looks or put limits on your beauty.”

Frankie laughs and winces when her ribs ache at the movement, but she can’t get rid of the smile on her face. “Standish, it’s fine. Just...shut up for a second.” She takes another breath and the smile falls from her face. “I know that I rag on you a lot, but I want you to know -”

“Nah, Frankie, don’t please -” 

“I want you to know that I’m proud of you. You’re going to make a great agent one day. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” 

“I’ll only be as good as you say if you help me,” Standish says and Frankie can hear the change in his pitch from holding back tears. 

“Can you put me through to Susan, please?” Frankie asks softly instead of responding. It only takes a moment before Susan comes through. 

“Hey, sweetie.” 

“Hey, Suze,” Frankie chokes out. 

“Now, I know you’re going to try and give me some goodbye speech, but I’m going to stop you before that, okay? Because we are going to find you and you are going to be just fine. So please do not say anything to me right now that sounds like goodbye.” 

Frankie says nothing for a long moment before she huffs out another laugh followed by sob that shakes her whole body. Susan waits for her to finish, whispering soothing words around her own tears. “I love you, Frankie,” she says into the comms.

“I love you, too, Susan,” Frankie finally says, pulling herself together. “Hey, can you put me through to Ray?”

“Ray? You don’t want to talk to Will?” Susan asks, confusion lacing her tone. 

“Ray, please.” 

Frankie hears the click of the comms one more time before the silence is filled with the sound of a running car. 

“Ray?” Frankie says softly. 

“Frankie!?” Ray returns, his confusion matching Susan’s. From a distance, Frankie hears Will’s voice asking if she’s back on comms. 

“Ray, do me a favor?” Her voice is small still and she can hear a warning beep from her phone. In the background, Will’s voice is demanding she be put back through on his comms. 

“What do you need, Frankie?” Ray asks, ignoring Will next to him. 

“Just...take care of him,” Frankie says. “Please.” 

She can hear Ray swallow hard, even through the phone and car noises and over Will’s begging. 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. I can do that.” 

Frankie sighs again. “Thank you.” 

“Do you wanna....do you wanna talk to Will?” Ray asks gingerly. 

Frankie takes a long moment to answer, listening as Will asks Ray in the background what she’s saying. Her whole heart is screaming to say yes, that she wants to hear his voice one last time, but she also doesn’t want him to carry that memory of her. Finally she answers, closing her eyes in pain when she does. 

“No.” 

And then her phone goes dark. 

*****

“Frankie?” Ray mutters, pressing a finger to the piece of tech in his ear, hoping she’s just silent and that they haven’t lost her again.

“What is it? What did she say?” Will asks frantically, pressing his own finger to his earpiece. “Frankie?!” 

Ray can hear Jai rapidly redialing Frankie’s line, cursing in Hindi when the line goes straight to voicemail every time. Ray casts a glance at Will next to him before shooting a look in the rearview mirror at Agent Baker. He spares only a moment to question the look of apathy on the other agent’s face before he turns his attention back on the road. They’re only moments from the location Standish had sent them, the little dot on his GPS glowing, the little yellow line growing shorter.

“Will,” he says, trying to get the man’s attention. “We’re here.” He pulls to the side of the road and barely has the SUV in park before Will is out the door, scanning the wooded area for any sign of his partner. Ray grabs his phone and follows, trying to pinpoint where on the map they should start looking. There’s a transparent blue circle pulsating on his screen and even in his hand it seems too big. There’s so much area here and not enough time and Ray can feel bile rise up in the back of his throat. 

“Echo,” Ray starts, reverting back to field names. “Any luck in narrowing down our search area?”

From the other end, Ray can hear Jai still trying Frankie’s line and the clacking of computer keys as Standish tries his hardest to find their missing friend. 

“I got it to a mile and half search radius, but I’m afraid that’s as close as I can get. If we can get her back on the line now that you’re there, I can try to triangulate the signal with your phone and get it closer.” The younger agent sounds defeated and unsure and Ray rubs a hand over his face. 

“Affirmative,” is all he says however and then turns his attention back to Will, taking note of Agent Baker falling in behind them. 

“Whiskey-” Ray starts but he’s cut off as Will moves away from him and deeper into the trees. “Wait!” His training kicks in as his eyes scan the treeline, looking for any signs of movement and his hand automatically moves to unlatch his holster, just in case. He sees that Will has already done the same and he’s glad that everything is pretty much muscle memory at this point because he’s sure his ex-partner’s mind is trying to make sense of a thousand different things right now. 

The deeper they go into the trees, heading to the heart of Standish’s search area, the darker it gets. There’s so many trees here that Ray is having to look down every few moments to make sure he doesn’t trip over a tree root. “Whiskey!” he whispers harshly to the man in front of him, trying to get him to slow down. There’s something not right here, something clawing at the back of his mind, even as he follows Will step for step. 

Will must feel the unease too because he pauses at a relatively large clearing. Ray’s voice is even quieter when he repeats Will’s name in the gloom of the forest. “Whiskey…”

To his credit, Will actually listens this time, turning to face the other two agents but keeping his gaze out into the woods. “I know,” he whispers just as quietly. 

They’ve figured out at the same time just what’s wrong with the situation they’ve found themselves in, but it comes just a moment too late. Just when he’s about to make a comment about the lack of wildlife, the silence of birds, a shot rings out and the tree behind Will’s head explodes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter six title - All My Friends by Dermot Kennedy


	7. we are coming home

Frankie’s head throbs when she next wakes and the buzz in her ears has turned into a roar. Her body seems to tense and release in waves and she knows that her muscles are going to be sore in the morning. If she’s alive in the morning. 

It’s dark in the box since her phone died and all she can really make out is the slats of wood above her and the shadow of her feet where the pale yellow light of her Maglite points. She briefly contemplates attempting to dig her way out, but she knows she no longer has the energy for anything like that. 

Instead, she thinks of her team. She tries to picture what each of them look like right now and tries not to think about what will happen when she’s gone. 

She thinks Susan and Ray will be fine. Ray will be upset of course because Will will be upset, but he and Frankie had never been as close as the others. She thinks he’ll probably be sad for a while, but will move on and that at least gives her comfort. She tries not to think of what Susan’s face will look like in the aftermath, but Frankie also knows that Susan has the coping mechanisms to move on in time. 

Frankie worries about Standish. Worries about how he’ll react to her death, about the misplaced guilt she knows he’s already carrying, about his ability to bounce back from the death of a team member. She knows he’ll eventually play it off, pretend that he’s not hurting, and she can only hope that the rest of the team will see it and intervene if necessary. She also knows that eventually he will move on and be a better agent for it. 

She thinks of Jai and chokes back a sob. It won’t do her any good to lose it now, here in the dark underground. Frankie remembers how long she’s known Jai and knows just how poorly he will react to her death. She wants to hope that his time with the team will allow him some comfort, but she also knows that he’s more likely to isolate himself and let the guilt eat away at him. 

When Frankie thinks of Will, she can no longer hold back the sobs. She cries because she never wanted him to go through the loss of a person close to him again. She cries because she knows that even with the support system he’ll have, he’ll blame himself most of all. She cries because of the lost potential between the two of them. She tries not to picture him, but the mind is a fickle thing and his face flickers across her thoughts. 

She tries to remember him smiling, that half grin he does when he thinks no one is looking. She thinks of the full on smile he’s flashed her way more than once, the one that makes warmth bloom in the pit of her stomach. She thinks of his green eyes, sparkling with happiness and mischief and the secrets they hold when he’s looking at her. 

Frankie knows she needs to slow her breathing and she weighs the thought against the knowledge that it really doesn’t matter at this point. She tries to take a deeper breath, gritting her teeth against the pain flaring across her abdomen and chest, letting it out slowly into the damp air. Her cries slow and then stop and all she can see is fading darkness and the memory of Will’s smile behind her eyes. 

And she sleeps. 

*****

Will’s ears are ringing as he ducks behind a tree, back to back with Ray. Not far from them, Agent Baker has also found cover and all three of them have drawn their weapons, their training taking over as they sweep the area around them for the source of the gun shot. The silence that follows the shot is overwhelming and his eyes scan the treeline for any sign of the shooter. Next to him, Ray leans out just slightly and is greeted by another shot hitting the tree in front of him. He ducks back with wide eyes and looks to Will. 

“It’s coming from the east,” Ray says, keeping his voice low. “Low caliber, not a sniper. Just well hidden,” he continues. This is what Ray is good at, grace under pressure, and Will is thankful he’s on their side. “Cover me.”

Over the comms, Will can hear the team asking questions, a sharpness to Susan’s voice that is only ever present when Ray is about to do something dangerous or stupid. Or both. “There’s a shooter in the woods,” he says quickly, his voice as low as he can make it. “I’m assuming backup is on the way?” 

“What do you mean ‘a shooter?” Jai asks at the same time that Susan assures him a team is en route. 

“Possibly multiple shooters,” is all Will gives in response. He nods to Ray who darts from cover after only a breath. 

Will does his best to stay hidden as he aims around the tree trunk, trying to keep an eye on the direction of the shots as Ray darts from one tree to another. He still can’t see the shooter, but two more shots ring out about a hundred yards from them, from the eastern side of the forest. From the sound of the gunfire and the fact that the shooter is only firing when they have a line of sight, Will concludes that there is more than likely only one person. 

He looks toward Baker and waits for the other agent to catch his eye before holding up one finger and then fist, letting him know how many shooters there are and to hold his position. Baker nods in understanding so Will looks back at Ray, safe behind a different tree. Will holds up one finger again, but then shakes it so Ray will know to keep moving around. He’s hoping they’ll be able to flank the shooter and take them out quickly.

Will is well aware of just how much time Frankie doesn’t have left and it makes his chest tight. He puts his anxiety aside for the moment and focuses, moving silent and low to the ground. He keeps one eye on Baker as he moves to the right and only jumps slightly when another shot creates a small hole in the underbrush near where he’d been standing. 

He’s worked with Ray long enough that he doesn’t need to see him to know that the other man is making his way around to the left, so Will pokes his head out from the side of the tree and fires off three shots in the direction of where the shots have been fired. He knows he’s missed when his volley is returned and he ducks behind the tree as bark flies in his face. But he knows that it’s provided enough of a distraction for Ray and Baker to take opposite sides and start flanking the shooter. 

It takes longer than he’s comfortable with for Ray and Baker to get to trees on either side of the shooter. It’s probably less than a minute before a shot rings out, farther away than he would have anticipated, and Ray’s voice comes over the comms. 

“Suspect is down,” he says and Will breathes a sigh of relief before the fear takes over again. It’s taking too long to find her and every second they waste is time Frankie doesn’t have. He makes his way over to Ray and Baker to see them standing over a man in dark green clothes. The blood surrounding the man’s head lets Will know exactly how he died. 

When he looks up, Baker is checking his pistol before storing it in his holster. His face is apathetic as he stares at the shooter, but Will can see the muscles in his jaw clench. When Baker looks up, Will just nods in his direction. 

“Everyone okay?” Susan asks and Ray shoots back a quick affirmative. “Good. Back up team should be there,” she continues and when Will looks back at the tree line, he can see a team of black SUVs parked next to their own. 

Will is grateful for the presence, even as the buzz of anxiety grows in his bones the longer it takes Ray to direct the teams into the forest. But finally they are spread out in a line, ready to walk from one end of the search area to another. 

All he can really do is hope that’s enough. 

*****

Standish is fairly certain that he has not looked away from his computer screen since Frankie had gone missing. His eyes feel dry and gritty and his back cracks when he tries to sit up straight. But he doesn’t dare take his eyes from the screen, from the shaded area on the map that circles where Frankie _might_ be. 

He feels like everything is relying on his abilities as a hacker and it makes his skin crawl with anxiety. He feels like he did after his fall in Budapest, like everything is relying on him and he has no control. He’s been swallowing back tears for a while now and he’s not sure how much longer he’ll be able to take not knowing anything. 

He types faster than he’s ever typed before, pulling up every mapping, pinging, and locating program he can think of from every company and country he reasonably has access to. Even if it only gets him a few feet closer to Frankie, Standish thinks maybe that’ll be enough. 

He types around the sounds of the team, Susan and Jai in the room with him, Will and Ray miles away, letting the sounds of their coordinating buzz in his ears. It’s probably what makes the loud pop of noise over the comms sound louder in comparison and makes his whole body jump as he looks to Jai. 

Standish hasn’t been in the field very long, but he recognizes the sound of gunshots anywhere, especially when it’s followed up by the sound of half of his team scrambling for cover. His hands hover over the keyboard as he looks wildly around, that sense of helplessness even more suffocating. 

Hours ago, Jai had put up a countdown clock on the monitors they were using and Standish has been doing his best to ignore it as the numbers get smaller and smaller. Now, he can’t help but watch as the time ticks away at the same time as gunshots fill his ear. It doesn’t take long before Ray comes over the comms to say the suspect is down, probably less than sixty seconds from Standish’s counting, but it still feels like forever. 

He hears Susan sigh heavily with relief behind him as she confirms with the team that they’re okay and that the secondary team is there to help. His heart rate starts to drop back into normal levels so he chances a look at Jai out of the corner of his eye to check on his friend. Jai is muttering under his breath, low enough that Standish can’t hear him from where he is, and glancing at his watch every few seconds. He watches for a moment as Jai looks from the clock on the computer to his watch and back again before fiddling with the watch band. 

Standish has known Jai long enough now to know a few of his tells. Where Ray rambles when he’s nervous and Susan’s accent gets thicker when she’s agitated and Standish’s leg bounces when he’s anxious, Jai’s tick is to fiddle with whatever small thing he has within arm’s length. For example, right now, Standish has watched him unclasp and reclasp his wristwatch four times in the space of a minute, sliding it off and on his hand over and over again, checking the time in between each repetition. 

“Jai,” he starts, turning his chair to face his friend. 

“I’m fine,” Jai responds quickly without looking, buckling his watch back on his wrist and standing. He doesn’t take his eyes from the computer, but Standish watches as Jai takes a deep, calming breath. “I’m fine.” 

*****

Ray’s worry for his team has reached unimaginable levels. He’s been on missions before where he’s been worried for his partners, worried about the mission, worried about making it out alive. But Frankie has been missing for, and here he checks his phone for the thousandth time, over five hours, and the little countdown Jai had sent to his phone shows lower and lower numbers. It makes his blood run cold the further it ticks down and he clenches his jaw before swiping over to the map that Standish had pushed to his phone. 

The back up team, Agent Baker, Will, and Ray spread out, a few feet between them and staggered a bit to cover as much ground as possible. Standish has been sending updated search areas when he can and Ray can’t see a difference in size, but he trusts that the hacker is doing what he can to narrow down the area. 

Their plan is to just sweep the area, looking for disturbed earth or any clue to where Frankie might be. He’s hoping with the amount of people they have searching, they’ll be able to find something, anything, before the clock counts down to zero. He knows that even if the timer runs out, that doesn’t mean Frankie is dead. But it does mean that the odds of her survival sink lower with every second past zero. 

Right now his phone tells him they have ten minutes left on their original time frame. The five or so hours since Frankie had been taken from that office building had simultaneously felt like the longest five hours of his life but also the quickest five hours he’d ever lived. A small part of him is curious to see how time feels in these next ten minutes. 

Ray knows that no matter how he feels right now, it’s nothing compared to how Will feels. He can tell even from where he is across the forested search area that Will is frantically searching for any sign of his partner. And Ray can tell with every passing moment, every second that they don’t find anything, Will is losing a little bit more of himself. 

He gives another glance to his phone, noticing the search area has shifted just slightly to the east, not by much, but enough that he points his body in that direction and starts that way instead of the more northerly direction he’d been taking. He swipes across the screen to the countdown clock and swallows hard when he sees a number in the single digits. 

He’s a somewhat logical man and he knows that a zero on the clock doesn’t mean Frankie is dead for sure. But he also knows that it was an estimated time frame with a buffer on either side. And they haven’t heard from her since her last phone call. The one where she’d said her goodbyes and Ray’s heart had broken for Will all over again. 

Ray clicks off his phone screen and goes back to looking at the ground, looking for any sign of a recent burial (and the thought of his friend being buried underground makes him want to vomit with anxiety), any clue that they’re looking in the right area. He can hear the rest of the group searching, the agency men and women that had been pulled into the field to help find a missing agent doing their best to find a needle in a haystack. 

He keeps walking, taking slow and deliberate steps, but he also takes a moment to stretch out his back and neck, sore from looking down for so long. He almost doesn’t notice it at first and it’s not until he takes another step that something clicks.

The ground here is softer. The ground is soft in general, under a heavy blanket of leaves, but the soil had been packed before, solid even under the foliage. Where he’s just stepped, however, is soft and his foot sinks just the slightest. He taps lightly with his toes, trying to see if he’s feeling something out of wishful thinking or if there really is a difference in the ground under his feet. 

Looking closer, he can see a slight outline where the dirt is looser than the surrounding area and the leaves are not as thick here. Ray takes a moment to push away some of the leaves with his foot, his heart beating faster and faster with every leaf that moves. His suspicions are confirmed, the dirt looser than the rest and he quickly looks around to the nearest agent holding a shovel. 

He holds off on getting Will’s attention for the moment, snapping instead at the woman to his left and demanding her shovel. He digs quickly, trying to find the edges of the loosened dirt, slinging dirt to the side and out of the way. 

It only takes a few seconds until his shovel hits something solid, a resounding and hollow sounding thunk filling the air. He freezes only for a moment before his brain catches up and he starts to dig faster. Another agent near him sees what he’s doing and joins in, moving dirt to the other side. 

The box is only a few feet down and coffin sized, a thought that makes him, again, want to vomit. It’s simple wood and he tries not to think about how it was fully covered and how the weather hasn’t exactly been warm. They get it halfway uncovered when he looks up, searching for Will among the other agents. He should be here, _needs_ to be here. 

Ray sees him across the search area, his back turned and his head down as he searches diligently for anything that would bring his partner back to him. “Will!” he calls out, loud in the quiet of the forest. He watches as the other man jerks his head up, looking wildly for the source of the noise. He can see the moment Will realizes that Ray has found something because his eyes go wide and a heartbeat later he’s racing towards him. 

When Will skids to a stop in front of the hole they’ve dug, the other agent has gotten his half uncovered. “Oh God,” is all he whispers before kneeling down to the edge of the hole. “Frankie.” 

Will jumps down at the same time the other agent jumps out, landing with his legs on either side of the mostly uncovered box. “Give me a shovel,” he says harshly, holding out his hand. He doesn’t take his eyes from the wood as the shovel falls into his grip and then gingerly sets the point of it between two slats about halfway down the box. 

Ray wonders if the other agents that have rushed over are also holding their breath as Will pries up a board, careful not to go too far into the box with the shovel. The wood creaks as it bends, the nails resisting as Will leverages it up, his muscles straining under the pressure. Ray can hear him muttering under his breath - “come on, come on” - and he wonders if he should jump down to help when finally, the board comes loose with a loud crack. He can barely see a tactical vest, unmoving, in the gap between the boards.

Will throws the shovel to the side, opting instead to grab another piece of wood and yank with his hands, pulling the boards out one by one, until finally, _finally_ they can see Frankie’s face. 

Her face is pale and her lips are tinged blue and if it weren’t for those two things, Ray would think she is just sleeping. His breath comes out harshly and his heartbeat is loud in his ears as they look down at her for only a moment. 

His last thought before a flurry of motion takes hold is that he really, really hopes that he won’t have to keep his last promise to her. 

*****

She’s not dead. She can’t be dead. He’s not sure he’d be able to survive if he reaches down and finds her dead. Her hair is matted on one side of her head, a dark red that makes him choke, and there are bruises on almost every bit of flesh he can see. And she is unmoving. But something in him tells him she’s not dead and so he reaches down.

Her skin is clammy and cool where he presses against her neck, checking for a pulse, but not a cool he’s felt before on dead bodies, which gives him hope. He searches for a flutter, a beat, anything that tells him she’s still with him, moving his shaking fingers across her neck. He can see that she's not breathing, but if there’s a pulse then maybe. 

Maybe. 

It takes him longer than he’s comfortable with and just when he thinks all is lost, he feels it. A slight beat under his fingertips that causes a spark to ignite in his chest. He lets out a surprised yelp, startling some nearby agents, and then grabs Frankie under her arms. 

“She’s alive!” he cries, pulling her up to the edge of the hole they had dug. “Help me pull her out! She’s alive!” 

Will doesn’t take his eyes from her face as Ray and Agent Baker move to pull her up, not even as he scrambles out of the hole and right back to her side. “She’s not breathing,” he says, fingers going back to find her pulse once more, just to make sure. 

Everything is moving so quickly, but this is what he’s trained for, these stressful situations. He just never thought it would be Frankie, his partner. They lay her flat on the forest floor, her hair laying out in a halo under her and still so unmoving. Will is almost frantic with his movements, moving his hand from her neck to her chest and pressing down. 

His medical training kicks in then and muscle memory carries him forward, part of his brain counting out compressions as the rest of him is filled with dread. It feels like hours, days, years and then -

The breath she takes is harsh and not as deep as he would like it to be and the cough that follows sounds like it’s rattling her ribs. But she’s breathing and it’s the most glorious sound in the world right now. 

Will pulls her up, one arm wrapped around to hold her up as she catches her breath and the other cradling her head. “Frankie!” he says, not loud but definitely only for them. “I got you, Franks.” 

Her breaths are still shaky and her hands, one at his back, the other at his chest, are clenching and unclenching. He lets out a relieved laugh as her eyes flutter open, looking around wildly before settling on him. “I got you,” Will says again and pushes her hair back from her face. 

Her hands clench again and he can feel her weakly trying to tug herself closer, so he helps her along, pulling her up against his chest into a long overdue hug.

Her voice is hoarse when she finally speaks, quiet so only he can hear, but it is there and a sign that she is alive, so to him it’s the best sound he’s ever heard when she whispers out, “Will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter seven title - Home by Dotan


	8. though the truth may vary

The ride to the hospital is longer than Will is comfortable with, but he’s comforted by the fact that the paramedics don’t seem to have any sense of urgency and also by the fact that he knows Ray is speeding along behind them. The paramedics had been gracious enough to let him sit in the back with Frankie, tucked to the side as the medic works near her head. The bruising is harsher under the ambulance lights as they speed through the countryside, the red marks on her cheeks and wrists and knuckles darkening to purple on the edges. In a few days they’ll be dark blues and dark purples and after that sickly yellows and greens and Will wishes he could go back in time to make sure she never ends up with those marks. 

The monitor attached to the ambulance wall beeps steadily as he rubs his thumb across the back of her hand, just above her bruised knuckles. Frankie’s face is covered with an oxygen mask and he can tell from the way her breath fogs up the inside that her breathing is still labored. But the paramedics don’t seem particularly concerned, no life saving measures are having to be performed, and they are getting closer to the hospital by the second. So, he wonders, why is there a ball of nerves settled somewhere in his chest? 

Her skin is clammy where he holds it in his grasp and her skin is pale, her lips tinged just the slightest blue from her lack of oxygen, but he can see even now there’s a slight pinkening to her cheeks. It almost feels like he can relax until the monitor on the walls lets out an off-rhythm beep, loud even in the back of a moving vehicle. 

When Will looks at her face, he can see her struggle to open her eyes, the weight of the day dragging them closed again. But the beeping of the machine across the ambulance is getting faster, some of the high pitched noises stuttering when he knows they shouldn’t and then he sees her mouth moving under the mask. 

“Frankie, you need to relax, okay?” he says, standing over her so she’s able to see him. He thinks she mouths his name from under the fogged up oxygen mask, so he grasps her hand a little tighter. “We’re on our way to the hospital,” he continues. “You’re gonna be just fine, you just need to relax.” 

Frankie doesn’t try to say anything else after that, but she never takes her eyes from him. He can tell from the monitor that she’s starting to calm down a little, but her eyes still hold a well of fear. “I’m right here, Frankie,” and he sees more than hears her sigh of relief. 

Her eyes flutter closed again and Will shoots a glance at the heart monitor, breathing deeply as the lines seem to settle into a steady rhythm once more. He thinks for a moment that she’s fallen asleep again, but the grip on his hand is still tight, so he knows she’s still conscious. Every once in a while, and especially if the ambulance hits a bump, her hand squeezes his and as he watches her face he can see her jaw clench in time with the squeezes. 

The ambulance finally speeds into the ER bay of a nearby hospital and Will does his best to stay out of the way as the paramedics wheel Frankie in. He answers the doctor’s questions about her blood type and allergies and anything else he can think of that will help with her treatment, running alongside the gurney the nurses push through the hallway. 

His head is spinning as the doctor barks out orders and he hears something about a chest tube and a CATScan but everything is moving so quickly now. It’s like time had been slowing and dragging out since Frankie had been taken and now everything was being shocked back into normal order. 

Will watches from the edge of the curtain as a team of doctors and nurses bustle around him, thinking for a brief moment that Frankie is going to hate the fact that they have cut off her vest and shirt. He jumps when a hand lands on his shoulder, turning quickly to see Ray, a look of deep worry on his face as he takes in the scene. Somewhere over Ray’s shoulder, Baker stands with an unreadable look on his face, watching as well. 

Will turns back to the chaos in time to see a nurse step in front of him and rest her hand on his arm. He doesn’t hear what she says really, but he let’s her lead him away from the commotion, her comforting presence likely the reason she was chosen for this task. She takes them to a quiet room, one labelled ‘Family Room,’ but Will knows exactly what kind of room it is. The nurse assures them that someone would be in shortly, but Will still doesn’t hear her and just sits heavily on the couch and drops his head in his hands. 

He tries not to think about how after everything, after finally getting Frankie back, there was still the possibility that they could still lose her. It makes his chest tight and he struggles to breathe, letting his head fall between his knees as he tries not to think about a world without Frankie. 

*****

The drive to the hospital from the agency’s European hub takes longer than Jai is comfortable with and he can tell that both Susan and Standish are just as anxious as he is. The hospital isn’t large, so it doesn’t take them any time at all to be pointed in the direction of a secluded room. He knows it’s not _her_ room, but he still opens the door with a worried quickness, catching it before it hits the wall. 

Will is there, and Ray and Baker, but they’re all silent as they look up. Jai can see how upset Will is and for a second he thinks maybe they’re too late. “Frankie?” he asks quietly as Susan and Standish follow him in. He swallows hard when Will just lets his head fall again, but then Ray is speaking up. 

“She’s in surgery,” Ray says, his voice cracking with emotion. “Her lung collapsed.” 

Jai sways where he’s standing, reaching out with one hand against the wall. He feels Standish behind him and he’s thankful for the silent support of the other agent and he’s also glad that Standish knows not to touch him right now. 

Across the room, Jai watches as Susan sits heavily next to Will, her hand rubbing circles around his back. Jai can’t hear what she’s saying, but her murmurs cause Will’s shoulders to slowly lower from where they were tucked up around his ears and he takes a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. Jai can’t help but follow along with him unconsciously before lowering himself into a nearby seat. 

Standish shifts from foot to foot before settling in the seat next to him, only to pop back up when a doctor makes her way into the room. Jai listens closely, takes in everything the doctor says about the surgery and a chest tube and antibiotics and the sigh of relief he lets out when the doctor finally says she thinks Frankie will be just fine is almost audible. 

“When can we see her?” Standish asks from behind him and Jai’s heartbeat starts to pick up again. 

“The ICU is family only -” the doctor starts before being cut off by Ray. 

“We are family,” he says, a little less gently than he probably means to. The doctor pauses and looks over the group before sighing heavily and continuing. 

“Like I was saying, it’s family only right now, however, Miss Trowbridge will be asleep for several hours. I recommend everyone to find a place to rest for the night and come back in the morning.” 

Jai looks around at the rest of the group and can see the rest of them weighing the options in their heads and he’s not surprised when Will says nothing and just sits back on the uncomfortable looking couch he’d stood up from. He knows then that they’ve all made the same decision. 

“We’ll wait here if it’s all the same,” he says, nodding to the doctor and sitting heavily in his seat again. 

*****

It takes her almost two days to wake fully. She regains consciousness a few times in those two days, but never for long and she’s always groggy and disoriented. The team stays with her on and off, taking turns to sit with her while the others go to a hotel Susan had found to rest, shower, and eat. 

All except Will who doesn’t leave her side the second he’s allowed to see her. The doctors and nurses attempt to get him to leave, but he steadfastly ignores them until Ray and Susan smooth things over with hospital administration. After that, they stop asking him to leave and instead politely ask him to move aside once in a while to check Frankie’s vitals. 

The team doesn’t mean to take turns sitting with Will and Frankie, but that’s the way it ends up. Susan stays first, sending Ray, Standish, and a very reluctant Jai to the hotel. Baker leaves of his own accord, electing not to stay with the group and citing the need to check in with his superiors as his reason for heading back to the Hive, though he promises to check in on Frankie at a later date.

Will and Susan sit on either side of Frankie’s hospital bed on day two, the machinery the only sound between them. Susan knows she’s more there for Will than Frankie at this point, but the sight of her friend lying motionless and pale makes her swallow hard and look away. 

“Will,” she starts, watching the side of her oldest friend’s face. “How are you doing?” 

She knows he hasn’t gotten much sleep since everything had kicked off, but he’d dozed off a little in the waiting room, Susan’s own fingers running through his hair as he rested. But the dark circles under his eyes and the slump in his posture show a deep weariness she knows he won’t shake until the woman in the bed wakes up. 

Susan watches as he clears his throat and swallows but doesn’t turn to look at her. “I’m fine,” he says, his fingers wrapped loosely around Frankie’s. “I’ll be fine.” 

“You haven’t really had a chance to process yet, so I don’t think you’re fine -” 

His voice is thick when he answers, like he’s talking around a lump in his throat. “Susan, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, and maybe you’re right, I’m not fine. But right now, the most important thing is Frankie and making sure that she wakes up.” He doesn’t take his eyes from his partner, just tightens his grip on her hand. 

“Frankie is a strong woman, Will. She’s going to be fine,” Susan says, standing and stretching out her back. She doesn’t know if she says it to make Will or herself feel better, but watching Frankie sleep, color slowly coming back to her cheeks, makes her a little more steady. Susan makes her way around the bed and lays a hand on Will’s shoulder. “She’s gonna be alright,” she says again, a little more forcefully. 

The worried tension that’s been building since she arrived at the hospital loosens just a little when Will finally looks at her, resting his free hand and then his cheek on the hand on his shoulder. “Yeah,” he whispers and maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but he sounds a little more sure. She wants to hug him so she does, sliding her palm across his shoulders to pull him into her space. He doesn’t resist and the hand not holding Frankie’s wraps around her hip. “Thanks, Susan,” he whispers, partially muffled into her stomach. 

The two stay that way for a few long moments until the silence is interrupted by a quiet knock on the door. They look to the door in time to see Ray lean in, a small grin on his face. “Oh, are we doing hugs?” he says before stepping into the room and making his way over. 

“Ray, no-” Susan starts and then she’s cut off by Ray’s arms wrapping around the two of them. Below her, Susan hears Will grunt at the added weight, but she can also feel his mouth maneuver into a reluctant smile. 

“I just wanted to come check on you,” Ray says, finally pulling back. He looks to Susan and Will in turn, but they both see him only briefly glance toward Frankie before his gaze finds anywhere else in the room to look. Neither of them miss the look of fear and worry in his eyes when they pass over Frankie’s sleeping form. 

“I’m good, Ray,” Will replies as he stands, finally letting go of Frankie’s hand as he stretches out his back. Susan winces as Will stretches, his bones popping and cracking from sitting idle for too long. 

“You should go to the hotel,” she says, resting her hand on his arm. “Get a shower and some food, maybe a nap. We’ll call you if anything happens.” 

Will really does not want to leave, but when he stretches again and hears another round of pops and crackles, he realizes that he should probably at least shower and change and eat something that isn’t a power bar. “Yeah, okay,” he says, sadly and softly as he looks down at Frankie. “I’ll be back, Franks,” he says and then turns for the door. 

Ray offers to walk out with him as Susan takes over his recently vacated chair, slipping her hand into Frankie’s. 

Will listens to Ray chatter all the way from the hospital to the car to the hotel and then finally to when he drops Will off in front of his hotel door. For once, he’s glad for Ray’s ability to talk about anything and everything because it means he’s able to focus on something other than the bone deep feeling of helplessness that sits in a pit in his stomach. 

He toes off his shoes before making his way to the hotel phone and calling up for room service. He uses the time between making the call and the delivery to hop in the shower, scratching at the beard growing on his face. There’s no razor in his emergency kit, so he’ll just have to deal with the salt and pepper stubble. He brushes his teeth while staring glumly into the mirror, exhaustion and fear causing deep dark circles under his eyes and wrinkles in his brow. 

He eats his food in his towel, one leg perched on the bed and the other on the floor and when he’s done, he lays back with a sigh. He wants to get back to the hospital as soon as he’s dressed, but Susan was observant and had probably known that he would fall asleep as soon as he sat on a comfy hotel bed. It had most definitely been her plan all along. 

*****

Susan shoots a glance at the clock above Frankie’s bed and then another at the slowly sinking sun outside her window. Will’s been gone for a few hours and she hopes that means he’s getting some most needed rest. Ray had returned after dropping him off, sitting with Susan for a bit before taking a phone call from the director about Frankie’s status. She’ll talk to him later about the fact that he never once looked at Frankie in all the minutes he’d sat at her bedside. 

Standish had shown up not long after that, filling the silence with conversation, some of which included her but mostly was just talking to Frankie. _”They say coma patients can hear us. It’s a good idea to talk to her, right?” “She’s not in a coma, Standish.” “Oh.”_ But even he had left to go back to the hotel for the night. 

Her stomach growls quietly and she contemplates calling one of the team to come sit with Frankie so she can grab a snack, but she hears the quiet slide of loafers against tile and turns to see Jai in the doorway. 

“Hey,” she says into the quickly darkening room. “Just in time.” 

Jai hums in confusion as he settles into the chair on the other side of the bed. “I’m gonna go grab some food,” Susan explains. “Do you want anything?” She continues when Jai shakes his head no. “I’m probably gonna head to the hotel after then. Call if there are any changes?” 

He still doesn’t say anything, but his nod of agreement lessens her concern. “Bye, Frankie,” she says and presses a kiss to the unconscious woman’s forehead. When she gets to the door, Susan takes a moment to look back, smiling as she watches Jai slide his hand into Frankie’s and move his chair closer to the bed. 

*****

They keep the lights low in Frankie’s room because the doctors have warned them that she may wake up with some light sensitivity. There’s a small lamp on the bedside table near her head and a buzzing fluorescent above her, only there to help the nurse see when they come in to change bandages and write in her chart. It has the unfortunate effect of making the sharp lines of her cheekbones cast shadows across the pillow and the dark blue-black-purple bruises on her face look worse than before. 

The lump in Jai’s throat as he watches Frankie’s chest rise and fall makes it hard for him to swallow. “Frankie,” he starts before trailing off, not knowing what to say. The hand he has wrapped around hers tenses as he struggles with the words he wants to say. He sighs, an angry huff out of his nose, and sets his jaw. 

“Wake up, Francesca.” 

The order isn’t quiet but it bursts through the silence of the room like a gunshot. “Wake up,” Jai says even more forcefully. He’s hoping for a twitch, a jerk, anything to let him know that she’s still with him, but there is nothing. He feels his frustration rise. 

Jai’s not angry. Well, he is, but not at Frankie. Not at Will or the rest of the team or the doctors. He’s angry at the people that took her, at the situation they’ve found themselves in, at his inability to do anything for her. 

He relaxes his grip on her hand and presses his lips against the back of it. Neither of them is particularly tactile, though he has noticed the frequency of their hugs has increased in the last few years. He wonders if that has anything to do with a certain co-team leader and vows to question Frankie about it when she wakes up. 

_If she wakes up._

He shakes off the intrusive thought and looks back up at Frankie’s still sleeping face. She hasn’t changed much in the five years that he’s known her, at least not physically. There’s a small scar on her chin from the time a woman landed a right hook while wearing a frankly audacious ring. Under her hospital gown, he knows there’s a few faded white scars from knicks and cuts, a roadmap of missions gone wrong. And he knows on her belly is the almost perfect circle of scar tissue from where Will had saved her life. 

Mentally, though, she’s not the same Frankie she was when they met. The Frankie he’d been assigned to all those years ago had been angry and closed off and still healing from the Portugal mission. They had fit so well together then, meeting up only when the mission required it, staying out of each other’s way, and never knowing anything personal about the other. Knowing people means inevitably losing them and it was easier on both if they just didn’t bother. 

But five years changes people. Jai knows that they are both still cold and aloof because that’s just the way that they’ve learned to survive over the years. But he also knows that right now, seeing Frankie pale and fragile looking, has left a gaping hole in his chest that will only be filled when she opens her eyes. 

He presses another kiss to the back of her hand before leaning his forehead against her skin. Her skin is warm, though her fingertips at his wrist are cold, a trait she’s had as long as he’s known her, and the steady beeps from the monitor keep the vice around his heart from tightening. She’s not getting worse and that, at least, is something, but he needs for her to wake up, needs to see that she’s okay or going to be okay. She has to be okay because he’s not sure what he’ll do if she’s not. 

“Wake up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 8 title - Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men


	9. all of your love is sunlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're almost to the end! 
> 
> (also, i am not a doctor lol)

She wakes in fits and starts, continuously trying to drag herself up through waves of darkness that easily pull her back into unconsciousness. The first few times, she doesn’t even bother opening her eyes, only catching bits of conversations happening around her. 

The first time she regains consciousness for more than a few seconds, it’s dark and quiet in the room and her entire body feels like one big bruise. Shifting even slightly causes a sharp pain to radiate pain through her side and she finds that she can’t take a breath without feeling the ache in her lungs. She blinks sleepily at the ceiling before lazily sliding her gaze down to her side. There’s a pressure against her palm and when her eyesight finally focuses, she sees the sleeping form of her partner, his hand loosely wrapped around hers, the other one tucked under his face at her hip. 

He looks as wrecked as she feels and the heart monitor next to her beeps when her heartbeat stutters for a moment when she realizes what that means. She’s not sure how long she’s been in the hospital, but it feels like ages and somehow not long enough. 

Frankie remembers very little of what happened after that final phone call, but she does remember saying goodbye to her friends. And she remembers deciding very carefully to not say anything to Will. Looking at him now, dark circles under his eyes and scruff on his chin and cheeks, she almost regrets it. 

She thinks she remembers his voice briefly after that, when the dark of her coffin had been harshly broken up by sunshine and so much green, but her memory gets hazier and hazier the harder she tries to remember. Her heart monitor beeps again with another spike of anxiety and next to her, Will finally stirs. His eyes flicker open as he awakens and she watches as he stares at her hand in his, sadness in his dimmed hazel eyes. 

Frankie squeezes his hand with hers, thumb brushing across the bruises that run across his knuckles. 

She’d laugh if she had the energy when he blinks and then blinks again at the movement before shooting his gaze up to hers. His mouth drops open and she’s a little mad she doesn’t have the strength to make a fish joke and then Will’s eyes light up and the traitorous heart monitor shouts another loud beep. 

That seems to break him from whatever trance he’d been in because he snatches up Frankie’s hand tighter in his and moves closer to her face. 

“Frankie,” he says with a whisper, almost reverent, and it makes her eyes flutter closed in contentment for a moment. He’s still staring at her when she opens them again, as if he can’t believe she’s really there and an exhausted smile crawls across her face. 

“Hey,” she croaks out, quirking one side of her mouth up in a tired smile. She wiggles her fingers free of his, ignoring his desperate grabs at her digits, and rests her palm on his face. She runs her fingers across his jaw, scraping through the stubble that’s grown there and taking in the dark circles under his tired eyes. “You look like shit.” 

Will lets out a bark of laughter and covers her hand on his face with his own. “Thanks, Frankie,” he says and she feels the warm breath of his sigh against her wrist. 

“It’s not too bad,” Frankie continues, scraping her nails through the short hair on his jaw. “Makes you look...older.” She’s fairly certain that’s not the word she was looking for when she started the sentence, but it makes Will smile so it can’t have been all bad. She’s thankful he has a grip on her hand because her muscles seem to give out on her after only a few seconds. He keeps her hand pressed to his cheek for a moment more before pressing a kiss to the bottom of her palm, centimeters from the scrapes circling her wrists. The heart monitor beeps sharply again.

“I’m going to get the doctor,” he says into the quiet, setting her arm down so gently. She’d almost be offended if she weren’t so exhausted. She follows him with her eyes as he darts out of the room and then let’s them fall closed when he’s gone. It’s only moments later that he comes back in, beelining right to her side again and tangling his fingers with hers. 

The doctor and nurse follow in seconds later and she uses the connection of their hands as a touchstone as the doctor explains her various injuries and the treatments they’d elected to take when she was brought in. The chest tube in her side explains the ache on one side and her broken ribs explain it on the other. The fuzziness of her vision is explained by the concussion she’d sustained and when she concentrates, she can feel the bandage wrapped around the top of her head. 

Will stands next to her, laser focused on what the doctor is saying, and she knows that he’s absorbing all the information for her. She closes her eyes as the doctor explains that they’ll remove the chest tube in a day or two and that they’ll be keeping her in the hospital until they’re confident she’s passed the worst of it. Her head is starting to hurt and she’s clenching Will’s hand as waves of pain pulse through her body and then she guesses that the nurse has given her some sort of pain medication because she feels herself floating back into unconsciousness, Will’s hand still gripping hers. 

*****

When she wakes again, it must be morning because there’s a soft glow of orange light coming from the edges of the window in her room. The lights are off and the hospital outside the door seems quiet, so she imagines it’s fairly early. Will is still in her room, though this time he’s leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and head tilted back against the wall. He must have gone and changed because his shirt is different, but she smiles when she sees he kept the beard. 

“Hey,” she hears, whispered from her other side and it makes her jump slightly. 

When she looks, her smile widens. “Hey, Jai,” she whispers back. When she glances around the room, she sees the rest of her team, Standish on the floor against the wall, head on his arms crossed over his knees, Ray and Susan crammed into the single armchair in the corner. 

“How are you feeling?” Jai asks, pulling himself to the edge of his chair. His hand curls carefully around her arm, mindful of the IV and various cords snaking into her gown. 

Frankie stares at him, eyes flicking over his face and hair and outfit; he’s still frustratingly put together. But she can see the exhaustion in his eyes, the slight furrow in his brow and the tightness of his lips as he watches her. The guilt makes a hole in her center. “I’m gonna be okay, Jai,” she answers after a long moment. 

He lets out a shaky breath and grips her arm tighter, letting his head drop forward before she can see his relief. “Yeah, Francesca,” he mutters to the bedspread. “You’re going to be just fine.” 

“Ew, don’t call me Francesca,” she says and when he looks up she half quirks a tired smile at him. 

They both look up when they hear a shuffling in the corner to see Ray staring right at Frankie from where he’s lounging in the chair, Susan half on top of him. For a moment he looks stricken, panicked, before his trademark grin spreads across his face. “Frankie!” he whisper-shouts, and then winces when Susan jerks awake followed by an ungraceful snort from Standish. 

Susan gets to her first, waiting for her to raise the bed to a sitting position before bending to give her a hug that is somehow too tight and too loose at the same time. She grins at a slowly waking Will from over the other woman’s shoulder and resists the urge to reach out her hand towards him. 

Standish is next, pulling an affronted looking Susan out of the way before also coming in for a hug, an embrace so ginger it’s almost non-existent. He pulls away quickly, afraid to hurt her, but stands close to the edge of her bed. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says, his smile wide across his face. “We were all so worried.” 

Ray knows better than to try to hug her, but he does stand at the foot of her bed and pats her uninjured leg. Frankie watches as he lets his other hand rest on the small of Susan’s back as she settles next to him. “Good to see you awake, Frankie,” is all he says. 

Next to her, Will moves his chair closer to her bed and then slips both of his hands over and under hers. She smiles tiredly at her team gathered around her and breathes as deeply as she dares to do. She has so many questions - about how they found her, about Hughes, about what happened while she was gone - but before she can ask, her doctor comes barreling into the room, explaining that they would be running some tests so everyone would need to leave. 

Frankie tries not to let her disappointment show, but she can’t help the frown that settles on her face. It’s Jai that moves first, standing from his chair and moving it to sit against the wall. “We should let the doctors do their exam,” he says to the group, but he runs his fingers over her knuckles as he says it. “We can come visit later.” 

“Oh, let’s go get some pancakes,” Standish exclaims. “Franks, you want some pancakes? Maybe some waffles?” he asks excitedly. “We‘ll bring you some brunch.” 

Frankie just laughs at Standish’s antics even as he leans over to press a kiss to her cheek. “Glad you’re okay,” he whispers as he pulls away. 

The doctor and nurse stand to the side as the rest of the team files out, Will squeezing her fingers and looking like leaving her again is the most painful thing to ever happen to him. “I’ll make sure Standish doesn’t end up bringing you everything on the menu,” he says with a smile. 

“Thank you,” Frankie scoffs, rolling her eyes goodnaturedly. She still hasn’t let go of his hand. 

“Will,” they hear from the door and when they look, it’s an ever patient Ray, standing with the door open and waiting for his former partner. 

“Yeah,” Will sighs, looking back to Frankie. “We’ll be back as soon as possible,” he says with another squeeze to her hand. 

“Okay,” Frankie whispers and it must be the painkillers messing with her brain chemistry because she has to swallow around a large lump in her throat. “Bring me back an omelette,” she continues. 

“Spinach, tomato, cheese, no mushrooms,” Will recites dutifully, finally pulling away. “Cooked till practically rubber if I remember correctly.” 

“Yes, and get it right this time, please,” Frankie quips back. Ray holds the door for Will and she waves as he passes through, grin on his face. 

She watches as Ray starts to follow Will out before stopping and taking a step back, looking up at her with a serious look on his face. She can see as he swallows hard and clenches his jaw before speaking. “Welcome back, Agent,” he says, giving her a somber look and then nodding once before slipping out the door. 

*****

The doctor removes her chest tube and they put her through a battery of physical and cognitive tests that leave her exhausted by the time lunch time rolls around. Will does indeed return with an omelette, but she’s too tired to eat it, so it sits on the little table near her bed. The rest of the team comes and goes throughout the day and catches Frankie up on the status of her case. Hughes and Jacobson are in the wind again, but they have some promising leads. 

It’s the same routine for about a week until the doctors finally agree to release her. The team drops in, sometimes all together and sometimes one at a time. Will spends the most time with her, pulling up movies on his tablet and always making sure some part of him is touching some part of her. 

Jai sits with her too, when Will gets called away. She’s thankful for his stalwart presence, but she can’t help the guilt clawing at her every time she remembers how devastated he’d sounded on the phone. He never says anything about it, but she sees him drawing specs for newer tracking devices and she knows that they’re for her. She catches him a few times staring off into the distance, only coming back when she squeezes his hand. Both of them are too stubborn to really say what the other needs to hear, so they make do with being content in each other’s company. 

Standish comes to see her the most, almost like he’s afraid if he’s gone for too long, she’s going to disappear. He always gives a quick knock on the door before sauntering in, a wide grin on his face and almost always with some snack he’s snuck in. He talks about everything and nothing, pulling up text threads on his phone between him and some girl he’d met or showing her some Youtube video until she falls asleep. Sometimes he’s there when she wakes up, but most of the time he’s gone again, only to show up a few hours later to start the process all over again. 

Susan also comes by a lot. She’s the one that helps Frankie feel more like a person and less like a body lying in a hospital bed. She stops by in the mornings with a clean pair of yoga pants and underwear, kicking the boys out so that she and the nurse can help her get cleaned up. Frankie’s body is still sore and weak, but after the chest tube is removed, she starts to feel a little better. Susan usually stays for a long while, sitting with her and Will, keeping him company after Frankie inevitably falls asleep.

Sometimes, when Susan comes by in the afternoons, Ray will come with her. He’s strangely quiet when they come in and is usually quick to offer to get them all food or drinks or something to do. He tells Frankie exactly one time that he’s glad she’s okay before he ends up running out for dinner for all of them. He never stays with her if there is no one else in the room and if it didn’t make her head hurt to think about, she’d wonder why that is. 

After three days in the ICU and then another week in recovery, the team have a sort of rotation down when it comes to staying with Frankie. And when she’s finally discharged, all five of them are there to see her out. Will pushes her wheelchair out to the waiting SUV where Ray is waiting behind the wheel. Frankie has never been so happy to see a nondescript black SUV. 

Her doctor clears her to fly home, with the promise of following up with a physician in New York, so the agency arranges a private flight for all of them at the end of the week. Until then, they’ll be staying in a safehouse the agency has prepared for them near the Hive. She hadn’t realized just how far out Jacobson had taken her until she’s forced to clench her jaw through the long car ride back to the city. 

The house is thankfully just the one floor, sprawling flat on the corner of a block, but there’s still a few steps up to the front door and she has to take her time climbing them. Will keeps one hand close to her lower back, but doesn’t touch her, knowing that she wants and needs to do this on her own. Still, by the time she makes it in, there are beads of sweat along her brow and she’s ready for a nap. 

They set her up in what would be the main bedroom and Frankie wastes no time crawling into the king size bed, shoving throw pillows on to the floor. Her brain is screaming at her to get out there and do something, to get back into the swing of things, but her body is still covered in bruises and just those few steps into the building have left her exhausted. She gingerly lays herself down against the mattress, pulling the duvet up over her shoulders as she carefully wiggles deeper into the sheets.

That’s how Will finds her when he enters the room with her bag moments later. He can only see her face, the blanket pulled up to her chin, and there is a sheen of sweat on her brow. Her cheeks have a ruddy color to them, but that, to Will, is preferable to the pale and placid gray they had been those first few nights in the hospital. 

He smiles as he sets her bag down in a nearby chair and then makes his way to the bed. She must hear him, because her eyes flutter open as he approaches and they trade soft, unknowing smiles. He perches himself on the side of the bed and watches her wiggle one arm out from under the covers and rub at her eye. 

There’s still bruising on her cheekbones and along one side of her jaw and when her arm appears, the scrapes around her wrist and along her knuckles catch his eye. Will swallows hard and his smile drops as he meets her gaze again. “You scared me,” he whispers. 

Frankie shifts her hand down to wrap around his wrist, thumb pressing into the bones there in a silent apology, a quiet understanding. 

“I was scared,” she whispers back and they both shudder out a breath they hadn’t realized they’d been holding. Will slips his wrist out of her grip and he pushes some hair out of her face, letting his hand rest against the curve of her jaw. Through the rest of the safe house they can hear the other members of their team moving around. But in here, just the two of them, it’s a bubble, a solitary moment of quiet and finally, _finally_ peace. 

“You should get some rest,” Will finally says, breaking the quiet. He rubs his thumb one final time across her cheek, careful of the bruising, and pulls away, moving to get up from the bed. 

Frankie swallows quickly and reaches for him, stopping his progress. “Will you stay with me?” Will knows how much strength it’s taken her to ask, how much pride she’s had to push aside to ask for help, but he doesn’t say anything as her fingers brush his. 

“Yeah, Franks,” he answers, smiling softly at her. He watches for only a moment as she shuffles a little to the side, less in the middle of the giant bed, to give him room. He toes off his shoes near the bed and slowly lays down, careful not to jostle her too much as he settles next to her. 

Will lies on his side and follows the lines of her profile, the curve of her forehead, the slope of her nose, the bow of her lips, and then blinks when she turns to stare at him. He can see the exhaustion in her eyes and slides his hand to tangle his fingers with hers. “Go to sleep, Frankie,” he whispers into her space and waits for her eyes to flutter closed. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

*****

When Susan comes into the room a little later, she finds Will tucked against Frankie’s side, his forehead pressed against her shoulder, and their hands grasped together as if they are each other’s lifeline. If she really thinks about it, perhaps they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter nine title - Sunlight by Hozier


	10. champion, i can take a beating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Two Year Anniversary to our show!

It takes Frankie longer than she’d hoped it would to get back at full strength and even longer still before she’s cleared for active duty again. She checks in with her doctor twice a week before physical therapy, but even that is slowly lessened as she builds her strength back up. Eventually the bruises fade and all she’s physically left with is a scar across her ribs and one hidden under her hairline. 

She spends most of her time waiting to go back to work at her apartment and when she’s not there, she’s at Will’s. In between the small cases he brings home and the research she compiles on the Hughes case, they watch too many romantic comedies (Will’s choice) and old mysteries (Frankie’s choice) on Will’s television. He very rarely leaves her by herself and if she’s noticed that he positions himself to keep her in his line of sight, she doesn’t say anything.

Standish and Jai search for Hughes and Jacobson, but the trail goes cold. She contemplates calling Baker, but a feeling in the back of her mind, something about the fact that he’d not bothered to check in with her, makes her pause. She’s not sure he’d contribute anything anyway. 

Paul Hughes hasn’t made a move since calling Will from Frankie’s phone. Frankie doesn’t find it particularly unusual because he had always been someone who planned thoroughly before taking action. Still, they keep an eye on international chatter, looking for any sign of him or his team and try to plan out how to take him down once and for all. 

The rest of the team drops in to check on her frequently. Jai spends more time with her than he probably has in the five years they’ve known each other. He brings her take out and they pick out a security system that he oversees the installation of. She pretends not to see him hide the microphone in one of her succulents and just allows him to have that extra bit of security. 

They don’t talk about what happened to her, about the phone call she made in quiet desperation, for several weeks. It’s not until after Jai seems satisfied with the security set up and they’re sat down to dinner one night that she says anything. 

“I’m sorry,” Frankie says into the silence they had settled in. Next to her, Jai pauses, his fork halfway to his mouth. 

She watches as he slowly lowers his utensil and the tension between them rises. Jai swallows hard and takes a long drink of his beer before answering. “I know how hard that was for you to say to me,” he responds without looking up. “And I appreciate it.” His gaze shifts from his plate to her and she can see the lines of stress that are still on his face. 

“Frankie, I don’t blame you for what happened. I don’t even blame you for thinking you had to say goodbye. I just-” He cuts himself off, shaking his head as he tries to find the words. 

“Everything I said on the phone is true, Jai. You’re my best friend and I do love you. I know I don’t say it enough. Or at all.” She pauses here, trying to put into words how much she cares about him. “You have been a part of my life for so long, I don’t know what I would do without you. I think I just figured that of everyone, you’d be the strongest. The one that would be able to keep going if I...If I didn’t come home.” 

“That’s just it, Frankie. I’m not sure I would have been. You and I have been through so much together and maybe a few years ago I would have been fine, would have been able to move on, but not now.” Jai shifts his whole body towards her and it’s the most intense she thinks she’s ever seen him. 

“I’m sorry, Jai. You told me once that I shouldn’t push people away and I think I’m still trying to realize how far I’m pushing.” Frankie swallows hard and drops her gaze to her lap. She doesn’t startle when Jai’s hand comes in to view to tip her chin back up. 

“Thank you for saying goodbye,” he whispers and there’s tears in both of their eyes now. “Don’t ever do it again.” 

They both give slightly watery laughs before Jai leans forward and presses a kiss to Frankie’s forehead and then turns back to his food. If Jai sees the tiny, content smile on her face, he doesn’t say anything about it. 

*****

Frankie has done the recovery thing before. After Portugal, she was in the hospital for weeks and then home for even longer. Even after France, she took some time off to recover from being shot. She hates it every time. 

As much time as she spends in her own apartment, she spends more time at Will’s. They order take out and hang out on his couch. Some of her clothes end up in his laundry and he buys her an obnoxious pink toothbrush that rests next to his. It’s different and new and not something she hates entirely. 

She thought it would be hard, sharing a space with another person for so many hours a day. But Will knows exactly when she’s done and will either offer to take her home or just move to a different part of his apartment until she’s ready to be social again. A part of her feels terrible for making him accommodate her in his own apartment, but the idea of spending any more time in her own apartment - alone - makes her skin buzz uncomfortably. 

Frankie doesn’t want to think about what that means for their relationship these days, that she’s more content to stay at his place, surrounded by all things Will, than sit alone in her apartment. 

They spend most of their time directly after returning home just sitting on the couch and binge watching movies. Or rather, Will watches movies and Frankie falls asleep against the corner of the sofa. The morning after the first night this had happened, she’d woken up in a bed not her own, the long line of Will’s body pressed against her own where he laid over the covers. 

That happens a few more times after that first one. Frankie realizes pretty quickly that she does not want to be alone in her apartment, so any time Jai isn’t able to be there, she finds herself buried under one of Will’s many fleece blankets, belly full of take out and hot cocoa and eyelids heavy as Will tucks her in. 

Susan finds her there once, hair mussed and one side of her face red with crease marks from the pillow. She’s not sure where Will had gone off to, but Susan has a key and had let herself in. Frankie ignores the once over and knowing look that Susan gives her as the other woman takes in her attire - an FBI sweatshirt and pants that are too long at her feet. 

“I went by your apartment,” Susan says, setting down her bag and moving to the kitchen to flip on the coffee maker. 

“I fell asleep here last night,” Frankie says, rubbing a hand over her face. 

“That seems to be a common occurrence these days.” 

Frankie freezes in place, one hand reaching for coffee cups that Will keeps on the counter now so that she won’t have to reach up into a cabinet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, grabbing two mugs and flipping them right side up. 

Susan’s hum of disbelief is muffled slightly where she’s leaned into the refrigerator, grabbing creamer for the both of them. They work silently for a moment, pouring themselves coffee before settling at Will’s kitchen table. 

“So,” Susan starts, drawing out the word, a slightly smarmy look on her face. 

“Susan,” Frankie responds, cutting her off immediately. She doesn’t look up from where her hands are wrapped around the almost too hot mug.

“I’m just saying,” Susan begins again, slowly stirring a spoon in her mug. “It’s fine, you know.” She waits for Frankie to look up at her, ignoring the slight pink that tinges her cheeks. “You staying here is totally okay.” 

“I don’t need permission to stay somewhere,” Frankie says with only slight irritation. 

“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it. Don’t be obtuse.” Susan pretends not to notice the slight blush that stains Frankie’s cheeks. 

“Sorry,” Frankie mumbles, hiding behind her coffee cup. 

They’re silent for another few beats, comfortable in the silence. Frankie let’s her gaze blur, staring into space and missing the way Susan watches her. 

“How are you, Frankie?” she asks. It feels like a loaded question. 

Frankie lets her vision come back into focus before looking up at her friend, a fragile smile twitching at her lips. “I’m okay, Suze,” she answers, but the deep breath she takes immediately after is shaky. 

Susan looks from her coffee cup to Frankie and back again. “It’s okay if you’re not,” she says, quieter now, soothing in the way that she was on the phone just a few weeks ago. “It’s okay to ask for help.” 

Frankie’s blush is back, crawling up her neck this time and Susan knows how hard it is for her to be vulnerable, so she averts her eyes and stares down into her mug again. “It doesn’t have to be right now and it doesn’t have to be me,” Susan continues. “In fact, it probably shouldn’t be me. But I think, maybe, talking about what happened would help.”

She’s not expecting Frankie to answer, but she feels a relief now that her thought has been vocalized. They hadn’t mentioned the phone call at all in the weeks leading up to Frankie coming home, but Susan had heard her friend’s voice, scared and alone, in the back of her head for weeks now. 

They’re quiet for a long time, the only sounds in the apartment are the mechanical whirring of various appliances and the ticking of a clock in the other room. 

“I don’t sleep.” 

The quiet sentence is as loud as a gunshot in the silence that had settled over them. Susan swallows but doesn’t say anything, waiting for Frankie to continue. 

“I don’t...I don’t sleep well when I’m alone,” Frankie finishes. “It’s too quiet and it just...reminds me of,” she cuts herself off before finishing, but Susan doesn’t need her to. 

“That’s why you’re staying here?”

Frankie nods, jaw clenching and Susan watches as her walls come back up, less sturdy than before and with more holes. 

“He snores,” she says and then smirks into her coffee cup. 

Susan snorts and then lets it turn into a laugh, shaking the awkwardness off just as the front door opens revealing Will with two coffees and a bag from the local bakery down the street. 

“Brought breakfast!” he calls out before turning and doing an overly dramatic double take when he notices Susan. “Oh! I didn’t know you were coming over?” 

“Just wanted to stop by and say hi,” Susan responds. “Frankie and I got to talking.” She watches as Will sets the coffees and food on the table before bending to press a kiss to the top of her head. “I should probably head out. I convinced Ray to go to a farmer’s market with me.” She watches as Will moves through the kitchen, pausing only briefly to run his hand down the back of Frankie’s head, fingers lingering on her neck and then shoulder and Susan wonders for a moment if he’s reassuring himself that she’s real and present. 

“Oh, will you get me some of that apple-” 

“Yes, I will get you the apple butter you love so much,” Susan says with a laugh before draining the rest of her coffee and standing. 

“It’s delicious on pancakes,” he whispers loudly to Frankie. Susan has to look away from the soft smile that crawls across Frankie’s face as Will jokes and decides it’s time for her to make her exit. 

“I’ll stop by tonight with it,” she says, handing her cup to Will. “Text me if you need me.” She is comfortable enough in his home that she sees herself to the door, but she can’t help but listen in as she leaves. 

“What were you to ladies chatting about?” he asks, words punctuated by the clinking of plates he must be getting out of the cupboard. “Was it me? It was me, wasn’t it?” 

Frankie hums and then chuckles. “We were talking about how you snore.” 

The last thing Susan hears as she shuts the door behind her is Will’s affronted voice as he exclaims “I do not snore!” 

*****

Ray comes to see Frankie exactly one time after they return to New York. She doesn’t know if he waits until he’s sure Will is gone, but it’s really only ten minutes after Will’s gone to pick up food that a knock on his door startles her away from her laptop where she’s sending yet another email to Agent Baker, despite him not having answered her last three. 

“Oh, hey, Will’s not here,” Frankie says when she sees Ray waiting in the hall, but she leans against the door in a way that invites him in. 

“I’m actually here to see you.” 

She’s seen Ray serious before, but she’s so used to his good natured side, that the frown on his face gives her pause. 

“Oh.” 

Frankie knows what this is about. 

“Ray.” 

He holds her gaze for a long moment, the silence stretching between them until she wants to shudder with excess energy. She watches as his jaw clenches, the muscles rippling and pinching his mouth even further. There’s a storm behind his eyes and she knows now how he was able to climb the ranks so easily. 

Ray swallows hard before speaking. “Don’t do that again.” 

Frankie wants to be incensed, wants to be outraged and irritated that he would come to her, but there’s a fury in his words that she knows is only born of his love for Will. She knows because she’s felt it too. 

The muscles in her own jaw mirror his before she answers. “Okay.” 

There’s another long beat between them before Ray breathes a deep sigh and his shoulders slump just the slightest. “Okay.” 

He turns on the toe of his foot, a little of the goofy Ray edging back in with his movements, and heads for the stairs at the end of the hall. 

“Ray,” Frankie calls out before he can get too far. She waits for him to turn back and he does with the same arm swinging motion as before. “I’m sorry.” 

He stares at her for a long time before nodding, one more turn around, and then he’s in the stairwell. 

He slips out the back of the complex before Will has even returned. 

*****

Will is lounging on Frankie’s sofa waiting for her to get dressed so he can take them for food when a knock on the door distracts him from his latest round of Candy Crush. Whoever knocked is long gone by now, but there’s a package sitting on the crooked welcome mat at his feet. 

“Whosat?” Frankie asks, finally stepping out of her bedroom, duffle bag in hand. It’s pretty much become routine at this point, coming to her apartment a few days a week to do laundry and check her mail. 

“Delivery,” he says, grabbing the box and turning back into the apartment. He gives her a slight grin when he sees her, sweatpants falling around her hips and what is probably his shirt hanging loose on her frame. She hasn’t put her shoes on yet, but he knows it’s because she’s psyching herself up to it. 

“I didn’t order anything.” There’s a crease in the middle of her forehead where her brows have furrowed together and he shouldn’t find her confusion cute, but he does. 

Will glances down at the box in his hands as he moves toward her dining room table. It’s definitely addressed to her, but when he looks at the return address, it feels like the world drops out from underneath him and he stumbles just a moment. 

“It, uh,” he starts and then swallows hard. “It’s from the hospital.” 

The furrow in her brow deepens and then she grabs the box from him. It doesn’t take her long to open it and then she’s pulling out a plastic drawstring bag. “It’s my stuff.” She shoves the box out of the way and upends the bag as clothes, her tactical vest, and her phone fall out. 

Everything is covered in a fine layer of dirt that collects on the table underneath and she knows the clothes will go directly in the trash. Her tactical vest can go to Jai because it’s technically department-issued despite it being cut down the middle. Her phone sits in the middle of the table, screen dark and a silent beacon between them. 

Neither of them wants to be reminded of the last time this phone was between them and yet here it sits, a black hole pulling them back into moments they’d rather forget. It sits heavy on the table, the black screen a dark reminder of the conversation they’d never had.

Frankie’s hand shakes when she reaches for it and she pauses when she hears Will’s breath hitch. His face, when she glances at him, is blank, but his eyes are full of emotions she doesn’t want to read as he stares at the phone. She’ll never understand how something so small could cause so much heartache. 

Neither of them speak as the silence stretches between them and her fingers fall from where they’d been hovering to press the lightest touch on the phone. It wobbles under her fingers, but doesn’t turn on, long dead and uncharged. 

Frankie takes a deep breath, no longer flinching when her ribs protest at the movement, and finally picks up the phone. “Standish should go through this,” she says down to the table. “Maybe he can pull some locations from it.” Across the table, Will stays silent. 

A part of her wants to pull out a charger and plug it in, but remembering the last call in the log makes her heart crawl up into her throat. They hadn’t talked about what she had or hadn’t said in that last hour beneath the earth. They hadn’t talked about the things that she had said to everyone but him. Will’s never brought it up in the weeks since coming home and if she didn’t know him any better, she’d think he was past it. 

But looking at him now, she knows he isn’t. That he never could be. 

“Will,” Frankie starts because she knows it's on her to say something, to bring them back. She pauses again when his eyes flick up to hers and then back down to the table. He’s usually so easy to read and right now is no exception. Will’s angry. And sad. Heartbroken. 

“I should go,” he says. 

For a moment, it’s like she’s back in that box, running out of time and unable to breathe. 

“Will, don’t-” 

“No, I think it’s best,” he continues. “I just...need some time.” There’s a tick in his jaw where he’s trying not to let the anger and sadness overwhelm him. 

It’s not hard to figure out why he’s upset, why he’s pushing her away. She wishes she’d never opened the box. She can’t make him stay, can’t make him talk to her. Right now, their relationship feels like glass and the phone in her hand is the brick that will break it. She sets it back down on the table. 

“I’m not going to stop you,” she says and the anger in her voice is the biggest lie she’s ever told. She wants him to stay, wants him to be the constant she can look too when the world seems too small. She doesn’t need him to keep her safe, but she wants to know that they’ll do their best to have each other’s backs. She wants him to know the reason why she didn’t say goodbye. 

Instead, she says nothing as he avoids her gaze and heads for the door. It makes her chest hurt in a way she’s not sure has anything to do with her still bruised ribs. 

*****

Frankie can only stand the silence for about ten minutes. She calls Jai, who answers every one of her calls now, but he’s halfway across the city and when he offers to drop what he’s doing to come over, she backtracks and convinces him she’s fine. She can tell he doesn’t believe her, but he lets her be, hanging up with a quiet promise from her to check in later. 

She tries to watch television, but every movie and show she flips through reminds her that there’s no one next to her to keep a running commentary going. She thinks about eating dinner, but as she passes by the kitchen table, that damned phone taunts her. 

She finally decides to go to bed, leaving the dusty clothes and duffle bag where she set them, climbing into bed and trying to forget the look of betrayed despair on Will’s face. 

Frankie thinks she understands why he was so upset, why he felt the need to leave. She has her reasons for not saying goodbye to him, for having something to say to everyone but him. But she knows Will values relationships over most other things and not having her value that relationship, no matter the circumstances, was bound to hurt. 

She stays in the quiet, dark room, attempting to sleep, for about an hour before heaving a heavy, aching sigh. She takes her time getting her shoes on and pulling a sweatshirt over her head, pausing when she realizes that it’s Will’s. Even in the comfort of her own home, it makes her cheeks burn to know just how many of his clothes she seems to have stolen from him.   
She debates for a moment, standing at the kitchen table again and doing her best to not stare at the phone that still taunts her, whether she should take her duffle bag with her or if that would be too presumptuous. She knows that Will wouldn’t let her leave at this time of night, but she also knows that he may not let her in at all. In the end, she grabs the handles of her bag, squeezing tightly to ground herself. 

The drive to Will’s doesn’t take long and she once again has to argue with herself about taking the bag with her when she parks in his parking garage. She leaves it this time, hands empty and clenching into fists as she makes her way up. The elevator numbers glow a sickly red color as they tick up and Frankie is grateful that Will’s building opted not to have elevator music. 

The lights in the hallway buzz as she stands outside his door, working up the nerve to knock on it. She’s only been as nervous as she is right now one other time and that came just after finding out about her parents. 

She takes as deep a breath as her ribs allow and then raises her hand, knuckles sharp against the wood. There’s silence for a long moment before she hears a shuffling on the other side of the door; Will looking through the peephole no doubt. There’s another stretch of silence before the sound of locks being undone echoes in the empty hallway. 

Their blank expressions mirror each other as they stand on either side of the threshold of his front door. Neither of them say anything for a long moment before Will finally sighs and shifts to the side, an unspoken invitation into his home. 

“What are you doing here, Frankie?” Will asks at the end of a sigh after he’s closed the door. Frankie’s fingers twist together as she turns back to him, echoing his sigh. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice stronger than she expected it to be and almost loud in the quiet of his entryway. 

Will’s gaze is somewhere over her shoulder and she watches his face as she speaks. He doesn’t say anything in return, just takes a deep breath in and out of his nose before moving towards his kitchen. 

Frankie’s whole body slumps and her knees feel weak as he breezes past her and she can only stare at the floor as she listens to him open cupboards and turn water on, no doubt making them both a cup of tea. She knows him well enough to know that even as mad as he is at her, he’d never be anything more than a good and gracious host. 

She takes a moment to gather herself and follows him into the kitchen. “Will,” she starts, but she’s cut off by him slamming a cupboard door closed. It ignites a spark of anger within her that he won’t even let her speak and that tiny flame gives her the courage to say his name again. 

“Why didn’t you say anything to me?” he barks out, interrupting her again. “Why-when you were...saying your goodbyes. Why didn’t you say anything to me?” He still hasn’t turned to face her and when she follows the line of his arm up, she can see his knuckles turning white where they grip the cupboard handle. 

She feels that anger drain out of her and it leaves her absolutely exhausted. She says his name again, a soft, quiet thing in contrast to the anger she can feel from him. He’s always let his emotions get the best of him and now is no exception. She’d be thankful for her ability to put her own feelings on the backburner, but that would be a lie to both of them. She’s never felt more strongly than she has in the past few weeks, the reality of what had happened to her is now her new normal. 

Frankie swallows hard, around the lump in her throat to tamp down the fight or flight response coursing through her. “I’ve had partners in the past,” she starts, voice hoarse and stuttering as she tries to figure out the words. “People I’ve worked with or...been with. And I’ve cared about them, of course.” 

She stops again, dropping her gaze from him as he turns to face her. “But Will...I don’t know how to say goodbye to you. I don’t know how to think about any world, whether I’m dead or alive, without you in it. I didn’t...I didn’t know what to say to you because I never thought I’d _have_ to say goodbye. And I - I was scared. That I wouldn’t be able to, I don’t know, let go, if I heard your voice. And I didn’t want that to be the last thing we said to each other. I - I didn’t want that to be the last thing you remembered about me.” 

It’s quiet for a long, drawn out moment and then Frankie hears him move, the rustle of his clothes and soft squeak of the cupboard closing. She’s still looking at the floor and it’s a foreign feeling, being this vulnerable. After a moment, the toes of his socked feet make their way into her field of vision, only inches from her own feet. 

“Oh, Frankie,” he says softly and there’s a part of her, a part that is old and tired now, that wants to be offended by his tone. A long time ago, she would have found him condescending and patronizing. 

His voice cracks when he says her name again and she picks her head up to finally look at him. 

“I would have remembered so many things,” he starts and he’s so soft; she can see tears in the corners of his eyes already. “I would have remembered Paris,” he continues and his face settles into a smile. “And being Mr. Trowbridge. I would have remembered the bomb and Christmas and birthdays and that time in the bar when you punched that guy. I would have remembered so many things because I did them _with you_.” 

Will’s hands come to her shoulders, thumbs brushing along her neck, warm and solid against her and she feels her muscles relax at his touch. “We are not our beginnings and endings, Frankie. There are so many things that remind me of you, saying goodbye wouldn’t have changed that.” 

His hands move up until they’re cupping her face and her eyes flutter closed as his thumbs stroke her cheekbones. He moves forward into her space until his forehead rests against hers, lightly knocking once and then again before settling. Frankie’s breath shakes as she breathes out and wraps her fingers around Will’s forearms. 

“Frankie, I’m going to remember you forever,” he whispers into the space between them and then he closes the distance and presses a soft, sweet kiss to her lips. 

His lips are smooth and warm, drier than she would have imagined, and they are light as a feather for only a moment before deepening. Frankie freezes for half a second and then tilts her head to make it a little easier for the both of them and Will’s grip on her face directs her a little more. He tastes like beer and chocolate and her stomach swoops when his tongue flicks against her lips. 

They kiss for a long, heavy moment and then he pulls away and she finds that her fingers tighten just slightly on his forearms when he does. 

Her eyelids flutter open and his forehead is pressed against hers again, making her eyes cross as she tries to focus on him. There’s a joy in his eyes and a smile on his face as he looks at her and she wonders if he kept his eyes open the whole kiss. There’s a feeling in her chest that warms her from her center out to the fingertips that are still gripping him and she shudders out a breath against his lips. 

She wants to tell him how she feels, wants to be able to put into words the way he’s changed her life since meeting him, but it’s not something she’s good at. Instead, she runs her hands down his arms, feeling the muscles bunch under her palms at the same time his thumbs brush softly against her cheekbones. She moves from his elbows down to his waist and tugs him closer to her, fitting her fingers into the spaces between his ribs. 

Frankie’s eyes travel over his face when she pulls her head away slightly. She tries to tell him with a look just how much he means to her, just how much she cares for him, has always cared for him. It’s the closest she can get to saying she loves him, at least for now, and for the light in his eyes, she knows he’s read her just as well as he always has. 

She needs to kiss him again.

There’s virtually no space between them, so it doesn’t take much to tilt her head up and capture his mouth again, one of her hands sliding around his ribcage to tug him ever closer. The other curls into a fist in his t-shirt and one of his own hands mirrors it, digging into her hair as he cups the back of her head. 

The first kiss had been his promise to her. It had been his way of telling her just how special she is to him and that even if she wouldn’t be able to say the words, that he knew how she felt in return. 

This kiss is more than that. The press of their bodies against each other and the tightening of their grips, the almost harsh way their mouths moved against each other. This kiss is more than a promise, it’s a pledge, an unyielding fealty to each other, a commitment that should absolutely terrify her. 

But it doesn’t. 

When they pull back again, it’s with harsh breaths and still clenched fingers. They don’t move away from each other for a long moment and then Will presses another soft kiss, equal to the first, to her lips and pulls back. Frankie’s first instinct is to tighten the grip she has on his shirt, but he only moves far enough back to see her face. 

Frankie realizes that they still have a lot of work to do, a lot of personality traits that they’ll need to work through to make their relationship work. They both have trauma to work through from her abduction, but looking at him now, those green-blue-hazel eyes sparkling with adoration and mischief, she thinks maybe it might be worth it. They’ll have to figure out how the job works now and there’s still the matter of Hughes and Jacobson, but she can’t bring herself to think about any of that. 

Not when his body is still pressed against hers and the shakiness of her breath has nothing to do with her ribs and everything to do with the way his lips have quirked up into a smirk. 

“Do you want to watch _When Harry Met Sally_ with me?” he asks, quiet and close. 

Her eyes travel over his face, memorizing the wrinkles and the planes of it, even as she smiles up at him. “Absolutely not,” she answers and then kisses him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter ten title - Champion by Barns Courtney
> 
> Welp, it's over! If you're wondering why it seems like the Hughes/Jacobson plot seems unfinished, that's because I wanted to 1) focus on Will/Frankie (and the team's reaction to Frankie) and 2) make it kind of feel like a season-long threat rather than one episode. So, while the Bad Guys weren't necessarily dealt with immediately, trust that they will be (maybe in a second story or an epilogue late on.) I hope that that doesn't disappoint anyone :/. 
> 
> As long as this took me, I'm so grateful to the show and the fandom and especially the discord for encouraging and just being awesome. It's a relief to get this done and posted, but I'll miss it. I hope you all enjoyed it!


End file.
